The other evening I enjoyed watching the movie "The Post," about The Washington Post and the drama of the "Pentagon Papers" publication (you can't beat Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks), and it brought back memories of my own early years in newspaper journalism. Frankly, journalists are rightfully observers and recorders rather than participants in murder investigations, but authors of mystery fiction have created some great series starring reporter sleuths. There is Bruce da Silva's Liam Mulligan, an old-school newspaper reporter who debuts in Rogue Island, winner of the 2011 Edgar Award for best first novel, as he races to find the arsonist who is destroying lives in his hometown of Providence, RI. Best-selling author Allison Brennan's protagonist Maxine Revere is an investigative reporter driven to solve cold murder cases, and the series launches with Notorious, in which Max returns to old haunts to attend the funeral of a troubled high school friend once accused of an unsolved murder. Brenda English has created Sutton McPhee, a Washington, D.C., newspaper writer. The first in the series, Corruption of Faith, finds McPhee drawn into a murder case involving her own sister. There are also non-series journalist sleuths from some of my favorite authors, such as Sandra Brown, Harlan Coben and Fiona Davis. Brown's Seeing Red features TV journalist Kerra Bailey seeking an exclusive interview with the reclusive hero of a Dallas hotel bombing, only to be attacked by mysterious assailants. In Coben's Caught, reporter Wendy Tynes is making a name televising stings of sexual offenders when a male social worker walks into the trap, and old crimes and complex motives are revealed by the master of the plot twist. Finally, The Dollhouse by Davis is the haunting tale of a present-day journalist ferreting out the old, dark secrets of New York City's glamorous Barbizon Hotel for Women, where a generation of aspiring career women clawed for success in the 1950s. For more journalists in mystery/thriller fiction, see https://www.barnesandnoble.com/b/books/detective-fiction/detective-fiction-journalists/_/N-29Z8q8Z16gs
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