Customer Reviews

A Confidential Source

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3 star:		(2)
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Once again Brogan, a former financial writer, has created a plot around monetary high-jinx and addiction. In her previous mystery, Final Copy, it was the giddy alliance of venture capital and designer cocaine. In A Confidential Source, it's the low-rent neighbors of scratch tickets and casino gambling. For the protagonist, Hallie Ahern, has lost her impressive position as a Boston investigative reporter, and relocated to low-end employment and low-rent addiction in Providence, RI.
Brogan is always honest about the problem of economic temptation (an early work included an elegant Ponzi scheme, imaginary yachts, and the gullible folks of a sea-side town.) and isn't too delicate to give us a character on the margin financially, professionally and emotionally. Yet she treats her hapless protagonist with compassion and wry humor. Like Colombo, there is much more to Hallie than meets the eye. Beneath the vague dishevelment and the thrice-worn-this-week apparel is a tenacious and intrepid investigative journalist. The reader is drawn easily into her world without resistance and is carried along through a well-paced story to a satisfying conclusion The book buzzes with likely characters, not the least of which is the city itself drawn with an eye for local folk and foible.

She had an affair having an affair with an alleged murderer that she was profiling for the Boston Ledger. When she learns he was using her, reporter Hallie Ahern quits and relocates to Rhode Island where she takes a journalist position at a satellite bureau of the providence Morning-Chronicle. She fears working on any major story until the night she is in the back of the near deserted Mazurksy's market when someone shoots Barry the manager.

Hallie writes the article and Leonard of Late Night radio offers her vital information for her story. Leonard tells Hallie that Barry had a gambling addiction that forced him to sell his stores, but though broke still played; he believes the mob sanctioned a hit. However Hallie notices how rabidly anti-gambling Leonard is as he challenges the mayor every chance he gets on the issue as His Honor wants to legalize the "vice" in Rhode Island. He offers her more information on political corruption at the highest state levels, but someone who has killed twice to keep the story out of the media will add Hallie to the list of the dead if she fails to drop her investigation.

Fans who read A CONFIDENTIAL SOURCE will understand why many people oppose legalized gambling; Jan Brogan shows how the lure can cause a person to lose everything yet the addiction keeps them playing. Hallie learns this first hand when she begins playing at a casino and quickly is unable to pay her bills. Though one sided on the issue by ignoring the multi billion dollar illegal gambling industry, this novel is a well thought out thriller that is full of misdirection especially a believable unexpected u-turn that will surprise an elated audience.

Although I love mysteries and thrillers, I only read a few each year. That's because I demand that a mystery have believable, well-developed, interesting characters and a fascinating setting. I picked up A Confidential Source because of the great review in Publishers Weekly, and from the first chapter, I was hooked by Hallie Ahearn. No cookie-cutter female sleuth there! Hallie is the genuine article. I love the fact that's she's--well, a little wacky, offbeat, funny as hell, and passionate about setting one part of the world right.

A Confidential Source is an well-written mystery about a reporter from a Rhode Island, who unexpectedly gets caught up in the story of her lifetime - the murder of a grocery clerk with connections to organized crime.

What I best liked about the story is how beleiveable it is. You've got a down-on-her-luck reporter with an addictive personality. An overnight radio talk show host with a score to settle. A series of potential big-shot bad guys, and a government scandal that threatens to errupt as you get deeper into the story.

This book has the feel of the start of something big. I hope to read more from Jan Brogan, and her fictional counterpart, Hallie Ahern.

There is a new mystery author in town ... and she's writing to be noticed. Jan Brogan, author of A Confidential Source, has written a complex, multi-layered and exciting novel that will keep you up at night turning the pages. And when you've finished the tale she's woven, you won't regret the sleep you lost.

Hallie Ahern fled Boston and her job as a big-time investigative reporter after compromising a story when she had an affair with the story's subject. Hallie now works in Rhode Island at the satellite bureau of the Providence Morning Chronicle where the stories are relatively unimportant and her colleagues are definitely not on the company fast track for advancement.

Hallie struggles with her small job and with personal issues and addictions that have impacted her relationship with her mother and have affected how she feels about herself. Alone and lonely she is a nightly caller into a talk radio program.

One evening Hallie is in a neighborhood store when the cashier is murdered. The police believe it is a robbery gone awry, but Hallie is not sure. Her only ally is the talk radio host who won't allow her to use his name when she writes the story and who could sabotage her job to further his own agenda. Hallie enters a world of gambling, murder, crooked politicians, greed and addiction. What Hallie learns puts her job and life on the line.

A Confidential Source is a recommended read.

Jan Brogan's A Confiedntial Source is the kind of mystery novel that you just can't put down. Here's why:

1) The main character, Hallie Ahern is deliciously flawed. She is just smart and gutsy enough to unravel the mystery, even with all her personal shortcomings.

2) Leonard of Latenight is the overnight radio talkshow host with an agenda to bring down the local government in a corruption scandal. He's a composit of the guy who fills these shoes on the AM dial in just about every town. And he steals the show.

3) Instead of Boston, New York, Hollywood, or Vegas, A Confidential Source is set in Providence, Rhode Island. This underrated town provides the perfect backdrop for a compelling mystery. It's the kind of city you want to know more about when the story ends.

Filled with surprises at every turn, this investigative novel will keep you guessing to the end. Highly reccomended!

For reporter Hallie Ahern the road to redemption has taken her to Rhode Island and the Providence Morning Chronicle. She works out of a county bureau office in South Kingston and spends her days covering school board meetings, retyping press release and police reports, and other lightweight but needed articles. She still dreams of the big story but the big story blew up in her face once before and she constantly worries it could happen again.

Dreams are what got her into trouble in the first place. Dreams that caused insomnia so severe that she became addicted to sleeping pills. And addiction she still fights and is very careful not to give into again. That battle quickly becomes harder when the owner of The Mazursky Market, Barry Mazursky, is gunned down while she is in the small convenience store. While she did not see the shooter put the bullet into Mazurky's brain, she knows exactly who did it. Moments before a large man in a parka had cursed her when she saw his face and there is no doubt he killed Mazursky.

While she cared deeply about Mazursky and felt him to be a friend as she wrote in the paper for a lead story, the facts are that she really knew very little about him. After praising him extensively in print, it slowly becomes clear that Mazursky hid dark secrets. Assigned to continue to work the case by the editorial staff of the paper, she begins to discover pieces of information while asking why the police are stonewalling the case. Links to political corruption and a coming referendum of gambling appear and it seems many of the characters are using Hallie for their own ends. As she investigates, Hallie figures out this wasn't a simple robbery gone wrong, but a public execution designed to send a statement to certain individuals. She realizes this could her chance to break back into the big leagues and claim total redemption for her past sins. That is, if she doesn't miss the warning signs and get herself killed.

Rich in detail and with somewhat stock characters, this novel works forward very slowly as Hallie pulls the pieces together. As in many cozy style novels, the pace is slow and the mystery is an ongoing theme but often not primary. Such is the case here, as Hallie deals with possible romantic entanglements with a handsome District Attorney among others, her own addictive personality, relationship issues, both professional and personal, and her ongoing debate with herself over her own past failures and triumphs. Hallie is a complex persona who seems to shift back and forth, waffling between the responsibilities of adulthood and a wishing for simpler things. With the focus so scattered across so many themes, the first two hundred pages of this novel read like an elaborate setup piece.

But the final seventy-five to one hundred pages make the wait worth it as the novel begins to go. As the pressures rapidly mount, Hallie spends less wasted time with doubt and self-recriminations and becomes real to the reader as she reacts to the considerable forces allied against her.

Those familiar with the background political history at the state and local level in Rhode Island will appreciate this novel more than others. No doubt heavily based on real life people at high levels of State and local government, this cozy encourages speculation as to who the fictional characters are based on. That fact as well as the rich details in setting work well and make this novel come alive for the reader.

All in all, this is an enjoyable read that follows her first novel, "Final Copy." This novel is not a sequel and easily works well as a stand-alone or as a possible series start. That of course, is up to the author, but I hope that she will bring back Hallie for another adventure soon.


Kevin R. Tipple © 2005

Unlike any mystery I've ever read, Jan Brogan's novel captures the pressure and anxiety of being a newspaper reporter on a big story -- pressure from sources, skepticism from editors, and the worry that you'll publish hundreds of thousands of copies of an error. I should know: I was a reporter for 10 years, most recently at a 350,000-circulation daily. Brogan's plot is smart and well imagined and completely believable.

Brogan's hero, reporter Hallie Ahern, is the perfect depiction of a certain type of person drawn to the news business. Her life is empty except for her job, making her success or failure at work synonymous with happiness or misery. Brogan's wonderful writing lets you feel Hallie's desperation, puts you inside her head as she rationalizes her way into destructive decisions and takes terrible gambles. The whole time you're screaming for Hallie to make the right choice, yet you have the sinking feeling she won't. Still, you're rooting for Hallie to succeed because you know her ambition is a frantic attempt to repair serious emotional damage.

I really have to disagree with the Booklist review above -- clues don't fall into Ahern's lap at random. She uses her persistence, leverage and moral appeals to persuade people to help her get the story. Like in the real world, much of the information provided to reporters is given to serve the provider's agenda, something Brogan explains in the narrative.

I blew through this book in two days and am adding Brogan's first novel, Final Copy, to my TBR pile. I can think of more than a couple of bestselling authors who should yield their spots on the bestseller racks to well-written mysteries like this one. Buy this book.

A Confidential Source is one of those mysteries you just can't put down until you've reached the final page. So take the phone off the hook, eliminate all distractions, settle in on your favorite recliner and welcome to Providence...Jan Brogan's setting for murder, mayhem and corruption.

This is one of those crime investigations that could only have been written by someone who's been on the beat with a tape recorder and a reporter's instincts. Take for example, the scene at the hospital where protagonist/reporter, Hallie Ahern tries to wait out the security guard outside the hospital room of a wounded murder suspect. Or the touching sequence where Hallie tries to interview the family of the man who's murder she witnessed.

This plot could've worked in any setting. But small town Providence adds something uniquely alluring. It's a city where everybody seems to know your name, whether your a local supermarket owner, a late night talk radio host, or the head of the state lottery commission.

A Confidential Source is loaded with colorful characters, hair raising twists, and a mystery that will have you guessing to the very end.

A Confidential Source is a big-time mystery in small-town Proivdence, Rhode Island.

A fast paced read with beleiveable characters and unpredictable plot twists. I was hooked from the opening murder scene in a local supermarket to the very last chapter that caps off the mass corruption.

Highly reccomended.