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Mary Jane Clark is a producer and writer at CBS News. She lives in northern New Jersey.

Eliza Blake is a newswoman on the rise. Well liked and respected by her colleagues at Key News, she's entered a stage where everything seems to be going right. She's finally come to terms with her husband's death and risen above the depression that had temporarily overwhelmed her. She's happy spending time with her adoring young daughter, and a budding romance is making her believe in love all over again. Then Bill Kendall, a senior anchorman, dies unexpectedly, and Eliza is thrust into the limelight - offered her biggest opportunity ever. Everything seems right - and yet wrong. As Eliza starts to suspect that Kendall's death has ramifications beyond the set of the TV show, she begins to unravel a plot of murder, greed, and jealousy that involves players as high up as the White House.

Publishers Weekly

The behind-the-scenes commotions and rivalries of national television news provide a lively background for this debut thriller. Clark, a producer and writer at CBS News (and the former daughter-in-law of Mary Higgins Clark), spins a tightly knit whodunit with engaging characters and a suspenseful plot. Eliza Blake, a young mother and widow, is a rising star at KEY-TV, where she coanchors the morning news. After the network's revered evening anchorman, Bill Kendall, is found dead in his New York apartment, Blake finds herself competing for Kendall's assignments with his nefarious heir apparent, Pete Carlson. Soon others close to Blake are killed, and her world is shaken by her fears for her daughter's safety, and for her own. Clark's speedy, clear prose offers readers her insider's view of the broadcast-news business as KEY goes on location, conducts live TV interviews and covers a national political convention. She draws her hot topics from real headlines--AIDS, presidential campaign tactics and politicians' sex lives among them--and her journalists debate very current questions. ("Someone's got to draw the line somewhere as to what is personal in a public figure's life," one says). The few stereotyped minor characters--the slavishly devoted secretary, the homeless schizophrenic whose obsession provides a clue to the murders--don't detract from Clark's refreshing surprise ending, a very '90s version of "the butler did it." (Nov.)