Fiction From TV News

Most television viewers are familiar to the certain familiar faces that report the news but most don't know the story that happens behind the camera.

Mary Jane Clark takes readers to the world of fictional television station, KEY-TV, where journalists find themselves in dramatic situations.

In her current book, "Nobody Knows," Clark draws on her real-life experience as a writer and producer at CBS News to tell the story of Cassie Sheridan, justice correspondent for KEY-TV News, an ambitious reporter whose career gets completely derailed.

In the beginning of the book, Cassie has everything taken away from her. She is demoted from her post in Washington and sent to work out her contract in the Miami bureau. On top of all that, her husband has taken custody of their daughter. Cassie is determined to get her life back but stumbles upon a crime that has bigger implications than she'd ever imagined, involving the disappearance of several women.

While covering a hurricane that's moving up the West Coast of Florida, she meets 11-year-old Vincent, who has just made a grisly discovery on the beach. In one week, Cassie traces the connections between Vincent's discovery and a secret operation in the shadows of Sarasota.

FACT OR FICTION

Clark says, although she works at a large news organization, none of her characters are based on anyone she knows.

"I get a lot of dirt from CBS," said Clark. "But nothing is based on any one person. I take from all kinds of people to develop one character. I want to keep my job at CBS."

She says a fictional network makes a great backdrop for a thriller because TV news is a strange world. She says it is "full of big egos and lots of drama. That makes for great characters in a book."

The titles of Clark's first four books: "Do You Want to Know a Secret?," "Do You Promise Not to Tell?," "Let Me Whisper in Your Ear" and "Close to You."