The Midnight Show Murders

Professional chef turned amateur sleuth Billy Blessing finds himself in hot water when a brutal killing cancels a TV show—and its host—during its debut.

Billy has reluctantly agreed to fly westward and play second banana on a new late-night talk show hosted by comic Desmond O’Day in Los Angeles, a city that brings up bad memories. Twenty years ago, Billy had accused obnoxious chef Roger Charbonnet of murder there. A tricked-up alibi freed Roger, who vowed vengeance—and Billy’s arrival in the City of Angels just may give Roger his chance. When a deadly explosion during a TV taping kills more than Desmond’s chance at high ratings, Billy is convinced that he was the intended target. With politics, infidelity, and high finance sprinkled in, the case turns out to have more ingredients than Billy could ever have imagined. And when a beautiful female TV producer convinces Billy to find the culprit himself—on camera—the table’s set for a conspiracy with too many cooks and far too many killers.

Al Roker is known to more than thirty million viewers for his work on NBC’s Today show, a role that has earned him ten Emmy awards. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Don’t Make Me Stop This Car!: Adventures in Fatherhood and co-author (with Dick Lochte) of the Billy Blessing novels The Morning Show Murders and The Talk Show Murders. An accomplished cook, Roker also has two cookbooks to his credit. Al Roker lives in Manhattan with his wife, ABC News and 20/20 correspondent Deborah Roberts, and has two daughters and a son.

Dick Lochte is the author of many popular crime novels, including the award-winning Sleeping Dog, named one of the “100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century” by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. His crime fiction column ran for nearly a decade in the Los Angeles Times and earned him the 2003 Ellen Nehr Award for Excellence in Mystery Reviewing. He lives in Southern California.