Friday Memes: Beyond the Headlines by R. G. Belsky

 Happy Friday everybody!

Book Beginnings on Friday is now hosted by Rose City Reader. The Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice. Check out the links above for the rules and for the posts of the participants each week. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Beginning:

A black-pajama-clad figure crouched alongside the sandbags piled up to protect the building in Saigon--a building filled with U.S. soldiers.

Friday 56:

"Well, before you label me as a sexist male curmudgeon, I know one thing for a fact: I never hit you when we were married."

"No, you didn't."

He smiled. "But I did think about it a few times."

"I'll bet you did," I said.

This week I am spotlighting Beyond the Headlines by R. G. Belsky. This is the fourth Clare Carlson mystery. Here is the description from Amazon:

She was a mega-celebrity—he was a billionaire businessman—now he’s dead—she’s in jail

Laurie Bateman was living the American dream. Since her arrival as an infant in the U.S. after the fall of Saigon, the pretty Vietnamese girl had gone on to become a supermodel, a successful actress, and, finally, the wife of one of the country’s top corporate dealmakers. That dream has now turned into a nightmare when she is arrested for the murder of her wealthy husband.

New York City TV journalist Clare Carlson does an emotional jailhouse interview in which Bateman proclaims her innocence—and becomes a cause celebre for women’s rights groups around the country.

At first sympathetic, then increasingly suspicious of Laurie Bateman and her story, Clare delves into a baffling mystery which has roots extending back nearly fifty years to the height of the Vietnam War.

Soon, there are more murders, more victims, and more questions as Clare struggles against dire evil forces to break the biggest story of her life.