Murder at the Washington Tribune - Margaret Truman [0]
From senators to summer interns, from all the president’s men to all-powerful women, Margaret Truman captures the fascinating, high-wire drama of Washington, D.C., like no other writer. Now this master of mystery fiction takes us into the capital’s chaotic fourth estate. At the big, aggressive newspaper The Washington Tribune, a young woman has been murdered. And the hunt for her killer is making sensational and lethal headlines.
The victim, fresh out of journalism school, hoped to make a splash at the Trib—and then a maintenance man found her in a supply closet, brutally strangled to death. The Trib’s journalists are at once horrified and anxious to solve the crime before the cops do, and put this scandal to rest. But the Metropolitan Police Department isn’t going to let byline-hungry reporters get in the way of its investigation, and soon enough the journalists ad the cops have established warring task forces. Then a second woman is killed, in Franklin Square. Like the first, she was young, attractive, and worked in the media.
For veteran Trib reporter Joe Wilcox, whose career is mired in frustration and disappointment, the case strikes close to home. His daughter is a beautiful rising TV-news star. As his relationship with a female MPD detective grows more intimate, Joe sees a chance to renew himself as a reporter and as a man. Spearheading the Trib’s investigation, he baits a trap with a secret from his own past.
Suddenly Joe is risking his career, his marriage, and even his daughter’s life by playing a dangerous game with a possible serial killer, while a police detective is bending rules for the reporter she likes and trusts but may not know as well as she thinks she does. As Joe’s daughter finds herself trapped at the heart of a frantic manhunt, the walls come down between family, friendship, ethics, and ambition—and a killer hides in plain sight.
Chilling, riveting, and richly rewarding, Murder at The Washington Tribune is a brilliant tale of real people in a world where law, power, and honesty collide—and where the punishment only sometimes fits the crime.
MURDER AT THE
WASHINGTON TRIBUNE
A Novel by
Margaret Truman
Capital Crimes Series: Book 21
Copyright © 2005
by Margaret Truman
eISBN: 0-345-48603-X
Author’s Note
Readers of other books in my Capital Crimes series know that I always use real Washington places whenever possible. I’ve never seen a reason to create fictitious restaurants, hotels, parts of the city, or its institutions when so many wonderful real ones exist.
But for this book, I’ve found a reason to deviate from that practice and to fabricate a newspaper, The Washington Tribune.
As everyone knows, there is a real newspaper in Washington, D.C., The Washington Post, one of the nation’s most influential publications. Politics is Washington’s biggest “industry,” and what the Post publishes each day about our government can have tremendous impact on readers around the country, and at times the world. At the same time, it is a quintessential hometown newspaper, unlike its competitor, The New York Times, a national newspaper that simply happens to be published in New York.
There is also The Washington Times, an unabashedly right-wing daily paper founded and owned by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, self-proclaimed ruler of the universe. The Times offers no substantial competition for the Post despite having some good journalists on its staff.
So, why not Murder at The Washington Post, or Murder at The Washington Times?
Because certain characters in this book are decidedly unsavory and professionally bankrupt, I’m certain the Post or the Times would not appreciate having them portrayed as employees of their publications, nor would they countenance the linking of murder with their brand names on the cover of a bestselling novel. More to the point, neither The Washington Post nor The Washington Times, nor any of the people associated with either paper, in fact played any part in inspiring the characters I’ve imagined for my book, or the