Slip Cue

Caller One: "She was just the sweetest thing... there's no way she could have done all those horrible things you media people keep saying she did. Just no way." Caller Two:"Who's to say someone else didn't kill that Johnny Venture? Jasmine could have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. How do we know for sure?" Caller Three: "If she really didn't do it, why break out of jail? Why not wait for the verdict and walk away a free woman?" These are some of the comments--not really unexpected--that Shauna J. Bogart is getting on her talk radio show after the news that a television and radio star known as Jasmine has escaped from custody. After a long career as an entertainer, Jasmine has been making an amazing comeback, but now she's just been jailed. Well, someone who wakes up and finds a dead body beside her in her hotel bed can't really complain about that. The news now is that as Jasmine and four other women prisoners are being transferred to a different jail, the police van is intercepted on the road and the women freed. Since the nationally famous Jasmine was a local girl, Shauna J's callers, all of whom claim to have known her, are quick (and thrilled) to comment. Shauna J. is thrilled, too. Anyone who works in the news business, she tells us, will admit to the same, if they're honest. Add to that the notice she's just received that tells her she's been voted into the Broadcast Legends Hall of Fame. With her lover Peter off on some annoyingly mysterious mission, Shauna decides to follow her dream - she will find Jasmine herself, and get a firsthand interview. Shauna's convinced she can get it; she's got something other news people don't have. The song, "Meet Me at the Casbah," is what has sparked Jasmine's second round of fame, and Shauna's own mother had coached Jasmine in that song, many years ago. That, the identity of the dead man, and a scam connected with the song itself all begins to come obligingly together. But the tighter the strands are tied, the more Shauna herself is in real jeopardy. As in her first, award-winning book, Joyce Krieg has the delightful Shauna take you behind the scenes of the broadcast world and beyond, spiced by the call-ins of Shauna J.'s listeners and decorated with bona fide pictures of what goes on "backstage" in local radio, in Slip Cue.