John Wells (Klavan)

A reporter must overcome personal tragedy to cover a grisly assignment The Dellacroce trial should be John Wells's biggest triumph. After years of hounding the mob boss, the New York Star reporter has finally brought enough evidence to light that the city can't help but prosecute. Just when Wells is about to dive into courtroom reporting, his editor pulls him off the story, dumping him on a human-interest fluff piece. The young girls of Grant County are killing themselves in droves, and Wells's editor wants to know why these teenagers keep putting their necks in nooses. It's a tedious assignment, but the normally combative reporter doesn't protest. He knows how it feels to lose a child to suicide.   Wells chases the story in Grant County even as the hanging deaths rake up memories of his troubled daughter's death. When the suicides begin to look like murder, Wells's reporting puts his own neck on the line.

A newspaperman investigates a war correspondent's hotel room murder As snow falls on Manhattan, three old colleagues warm themselves in the wood-paneled confines of the Midtown Press Club. Two are editors at highbrow New York publications; the other is Timothy Colt, a daring war correspondent whose face is not famous but whose byline is known the world over. New York Star crime reporter John Wells listens as they rehash old times, then follows Colt back to his room to drink some more. He wakes hung over, just in time to see Colt murdered.   After a struggle with Wells draws the attention of hotel security, the assassin flings himself out the window. To unmask Colt's killer, Wells will have to reach deep into his fellow reporter's past-for the root of this murder lies in a long-forgotten love, and an atrocious war too terrible to be remembered.

A dead source draws a newspaperman into a murder investigation Mayforth Kendrick III is an unlikely name for a small-time drug dealer. As the grandson of a millionaire and the son of a Broadway mogul, Kendrick was minted for success from birth. But a fondness for controlled substances cut his education short, forcing him to make a living pushing drugs on the theater glitterati with whom he once mingled. New York Star reporter John Wells, who occasionally uses Kendrick as a source, may be his only friend. He is also one of the last to see him alive.   He visits Kendrick's seedy Alphabet City apartment because the young man has pictures to sell showing a Senate candidate involved in unsavory extramarital activities. Never a muckraker, Wells passes on them. The next day Kendrick is murdered and the pictures are gone. Wells smells a scoop, if he can only find the killer.

A tip from a dying cop puts a reporter on a long-closed murder case Easy E.J. McMahon rests six feet underneath the playground at an elementary school in Little Italy. A one-time steakhouse owner with a gambling problem, his troubles started when a struggle broke out for control of a mob family, and E.J. backed the wrong man. E.J. fled to the airport, planning to hop a plane to Wyoming, but was met at the gate by two heavies with badges. As they dragged him out of the airport, he wailed that the men were not real cops. They put him under the cement while he was still breathing.   Fifteen years later, newspaperman John Wells gets a call from a dying cop who wants to make a confession. Easy E.J. was wrong: They were cops, working on the mob payroll. Wells goes after the dead cop's partner, chasing a story so good that it might be worth getting buried alive.

A ghost story forces a man to confront the darkest secret of his past Christmas is lonely for a man with no family, and Mike North is grateful when his boss invites him to spend the holiday at his cabin upstate. But as a blizzard descends and conversation dries up, Mike regrets leaving New York City. Only the arrival of Susannah, his boss's daughter, saves him from going mad with boredom. She is quick-witted and beautiful, a perfect antidote to snow-bound tedium, and he begins to fall in love. For Christmas night entertainment, Mike invents a ghost story. It goes all right until Susannah starts to scream.   Something in his half-baked melodrama about a Chicago serial killer haunted by a man with a scarred face has touched a nerve. Unknowingly, Mike described a scene that matches Susannah's nightmares. Soon, what had been a dream begins to intrude into reality. To understand her terror, Mike digs into his own memory, hoping to unearth the secret that gave birth to the scarred man.