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Shauna J. Bogart, not her real name but her professional one, is a talk radio host on a locally owned station in Sacramento. She gets a call in broken English from ³Rudy from West Sacramento² claiming to have seen a body in an apartment near the Capitol. When the police go to the scene, they find the body of Dr. Hipster, another personality on the same talk radio station. Shauna is convinced something is wrong although the police think he committed suicide. She thinks he has information that people want to see suppressed. Perhaps itıs about the campaign for governor. Maybe it has to do with the Jazz festival. Maybe it is about the station itself. Shauna finds herself in personal danger as she investigates. The book has an excellent sense of place. I have never been in Sacramento, but now I feel like I have. It is particularly good putting the reader into Old Sacramento which, I gather, is the ³touristy² part of town, but sounds most intriguing to me. We also get a sense of the political scene, because this is, after all, the capital of California and officials and officials and candidates for office are ubiquitous. Finally there is a great deal of fascinating information about talk radio and how it works, both technically and personally. There is a real sense of nostalgia in the book about the glory days of radio. In connection with that the author has a very strong argument to make and sometimes she allows it to overwhelm the story. She believes very strongly in local radio, owned and operated by people in the community and programmed for the interests and values of the people living in that community. The national syndicated shows are bland, homogenous, and deliver the same information and convictions which often have no relevance to the local situation. I do not disagree with this, but I did get a bit tired of being hit over the head with it. I thought Shauna was an intriguing character although not completely three dimensional She recreated herself for her show and was constantly meeting fans who tell her they did not expect her to look like she does. She is passionate about radio and about her job and well trained and very good at it. She has romantic dreams about several men in her life. The other characters, while acting consistently throughout, are more stereotypical. I did think there were some holes in the plot. Shauna acquired information for which no groundwork had been laid and often it just fell into her hands without her having to do anything to find it. Perhaps I was just not reading closely enough, but I was surprised by information sometimes and wondered how she happened to know these things. And the ending was rather predictable to those who faithfully read through the events. This was a first novel and the winner of the St. Martinıs Press/Malice Domestic Contest. It was certainly a decent enough book and I enjoyed reading it although it had problems which are typical of first novels. I enjoyed it well enough that I will look for more mysteries featuring Shauna J. Bogart.
Reviewed by Sally A. Fellows, April 2003
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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