Murder Straight Up(1986)

Ed Gorman

At ten o’clock “straight up”, just as the Channel 3 newscast begins, TV anchorman David Curtis clears his throat, looks into the camera, smiles—then falls face-first across his desk, murdered. Cyanide. The likely suspect is a teenage prowler who, earlier that evening, narrowly escaped the arms of part-time security guard (also ex-cop, sometime-actor) Jack Dwyer. What was the boy after? And, as far as the case is concerned, why does Dwyer sense that the news team is hiding more than they are reporting?

Who really engineered the death of the anchorman? Was it Kelly Ford, Channel 3’s aging, less-than-beloved news consultant? Or maybe her boss, Robert Fitzgerald, owner of a station whose ratings have declined almost to the point of bankruptcy? What about Mike Perry, pro-football player turned sports announcer, whose sturdy good looks help him hide a secret the victim knew all too well. Where does grizzly old Dev Roberts, Curtis’s co-anchor, fit in? Or Bill Hanratty, the singing weatherman?

Dwyer knows there’s a terrible secret haunting the news team. What is it? And what will all this mean to the ratings?