Off the Air

This is Estes’s debut novel, but far from her first brush with the TV journalism world portrayed in the book. Like her main character, Jolene Garcia, the author is a reporter in Phoenix, an Emmy winning one at that. Readers will get the feeling that she’s all too familiar with the pressure that’s on Jolene to do it all—investigate, write, present—all while looking fabulous on TV, then rinse and repeat on social media. Jolene is tired of the fluffy stories that the station runs to please the manager’s wife, and when a death occurs at a local radio station, she’s all over it. The deceased might be Alex Jones-alike Larry Lemmon, a talk-show host who divides his time between hating facts and hating immigrants more, a story that’s bound to draw viewers in droves. Dare she hope? And better again, maybe he was murdered. Her TV-news sensation dreams are fulfilled, but many questions remain. Assisting Jolene in getting the scoop on those is a reluctantly helpful police officer whose portrayal of departmental politics and ethics add narrative tension. But best is Jolene’s relentlessness and endurance of whatever it takes to get the story. Estes says that “J.A. Jance’s Ali Reynolds series planted the seed for my writing while Hank Phillippi Ryan’s Jane Ryland series helped it grow,” so fans of those series are a natural fit for this gritty thriller.