Press Corpse; A Knight & Day Mystery

New York, N.Y.: Forge [Tom Doherty Associates Book], 1996. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Paul Stinson (Jacket art). 256 pages. Autographed copy sticker on front of DJ. Signed by both co-authors (Ron Nessen and Johanna Neuman) on the title page. Includes 32 chapters. Ronald Harold Nessen (born May 25, 1934) is an American government official who served as the 13th White House Press Secretary for President Gerald Ford from 1974 to 1977. He replaced Jerald terHorst, who resigned in the wake of President Ford's pardon of former president Richard Nixon. Prior to joining the Ford administration, Nessen served as a Washington, D.C. correspondent for NBC News. On the day of Ford's succession to the presidency, August 9, 1974, he provided commentary. That evening he was on the NBC Nightly News; in that piece, Nessen reported on the appointment of terHorst, the man whom he himself would succeed one month later. Nessen, who also served NBC News as a war correspondent during the Vietnam War, was seriously wounded by grenade fragments while on patrol outside Pleiku in the Central Highlands in July 1966. Nessen was a member of the Peabody Awards Board of Jurors from 1996 to 2003, and served as Chair in 2003. Johanna Neuman is an American journalist, and historian. She worked for USA Today and the Los Angeles Times. She was a Nieman Fellow. She graduated from American University. She was scholar in residence at American University. Press Corpse brings back the dynamic two-some of Jerry Knight, the "Night Talker"--the brash and opinionated right-wing host of America's most popular all-night radio talk show--and Jane Day, a thoroughly liberated and just as opinionated leftist reporter for The Washington Post. When a well-known journalist is killed at an event where the president is speaking, Knight and Day can't help getting involved. It soon becomes apparent that the bad guys may have hit the wrong target. And the president might be next.... Derived from a Kirkus review: Who slipped something into veteran CNN reporter Dan McLean's soup that made one of his most memorable dinners-the star- studded annual banquet of the White House Correspondents Association-his last? Before you answer, you may want to know that (1) right-wing radio ranter Jerry Knight thinks the murder is part of a botched liberal plot to assassinate another guest, inoffensive conservative President Dale Hammond; (2) Jerry's opposite number, Kennedy-loving Washington Post reporter Jane Day, is convinced McLean was killed to prevent him from going public with a scandalous story dating back to the US evacuation from Vietnam; (3) an amateur videotape captured an image of the Vietnamese poisoner, whose corpse D.C. cop A.L. Jones will soon be called upon to identify; (4) and the First Lady, a hard-charging hacker who investigates on her own, comes to suspect the President himself. A finale at the Vietnam Memorial will reveal that everybody's wrong-and the killer is a surprise. A Few clues helps to distinguish the perp from the rest of the famous cast. . An early front- runner for recognition as one of the mystery's of the year.