The future of journalism, a potential buyout and asking Americans what they see in Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump are top of Waylon Choy’s mind as he takes two former Vancouver Sun newsroom colleagues on what he thinks will be a short spin in his restored 1965 AMC Ambassador 990 convertible across the border into the United States. While Choy likes his job as a features writer, newspapers across North America are shrinking or closing, he has been offered $150,000 to quit and wants to discuss career options with his friends, one of whom now teaches journalism and the other…
The FAKE NEWS Mysteries
What would you do if you found a person dead from a drug overdose while you were out jogging in your neighbourhood? And nobody could tell you her real name or where she came from? If you are freelance journalist Waylon Choy, you use your decades of experience as a reporter to interview people and chase down leads to write the story of one of the tens of thousands of people who die every year in North America’s opioid epidemic.
In Misogyny, the third book of the FAKE NEWS Mystery series, Waylon Choy must make another road trip to solve a crime for which he feels personally responsible. Everything about the trip to Calgary makes him guilty, leaving his children, spending time with his children rather than assisting a young woman who came to him for help, even his means of transportation, a restored 1965 AMC convertible, which as his daughter so forcefully, and correctly, points out, spews carbon into the atmosphere, thus contributing to global warming.
The author of a new mystery/thriller series about a journalist trying to uphold the principles of his craft in the era of Donald Trump says his “strange” background compels him to write stories that are both entertaining and thought provoking. “I was a playwright who specialized in comedy before I became a journalist,” said Gary Engler. “I really enjoyed sitting in the theatre listening to an audience laugh and have a good time. So entertaining readers has always been a priority.” “But then there’s always been a serious side to my work and I think that comes from my time…