After waking up the neighborhood with The Morning Show Murders, and keeping readers up late solving The Midnight Show Murders, Al Roker returns with his most tantalizing mystery to date. Celebrity chef turned sleuth Billy Blessing finds his plate full of danger once again, as secrets from his long-buried past threaten to make a comeback.
Before Billy had his five-star restaurant in New York, before he was tapped to co-host the morning show Wake Up, America! and travel with it for a week in the Windy Cityβbefore he even assumed the name Billy Blessingβhe lived a totally different life under a very different identity: as wily con man Billy Blanchard. Caught trying to run a scam on a shady Detroit businessman, Billy did time for his crimes, reinvented himself, and has successfully kept that part of his past covered up ever since. But when he and Eddie Patton, a nosy ex-cop with a long memory, are guests on a popular Chicago TV talk show, the off-camera chat turns to blackmail. And Billy may have no choice but to pay up or see the embarrassing truth from being blogcast to the world on Pattonβs true crime website.
This being Chicago, secrets have a way of getting outβand getting people killed. When Patton winds up dead in his apartment only hours after trying to shake Billy down, itβs just the first in a string of killings that has Americaβs most beloved TV host scrambling for clues, unsure who his friends are, and desperate to clear his name before he becomes the mediaβs latest poster child for celebrity scandal. Throw in a budding romance with a visiting movie star and Billy Blessing may have finally gotten himself into one sticky situation even he canβt talk his way out of.