Trust Me On This

NY,NY.: Mysterious Press, 1988. First Edition with complete number line beginning with 1. Page edges lightly stained, lightly soiled at top of pages else near fine in dust jacket, a handfull of indentations on the jacket, shows minimal wear, lightly rubbed, not price clipped. "Versatile Westlake delivers another offbeat story about picaresque types in his inimitably satiric, irresistible style. The action jets forward from the minute Sara Joslyn notices a corpse on the way to her new job as a reporter for the Weekly Galaxy in Florida. Naively, Sara congratulates herself on writing a big story right away but is quickly disillusioned. Her editor ignores the scoop, ordering Sara to concentrate on drumming up flaky features, the pseudo-newspaper's reason for being. The place is a madhouse with the staff competing with one another to contribute lurid, sleazy "articles." Catching on, Sara becomes as adept as shameless "Boy" Cartwright, tough Ida Gavin and the rest of the reportorial roster. After scoring a coup with a phony piece about 100-year-old twins, Sara gets a prize assignment. With her young editor Jack Ingersoll and other reporters, she travels to Martha's Vineyard, using every ploy to crash the securely guarded wedding party of a TV star. When luck saves her several times from mysterious gunshots, Sara remembers the victim she saw on her first working day and realizes why someone wants her dead, too. This is a boffo performance, the tone set in Westlake's foreword. Disclaiming the existence of any newspaper like the Galaxy, he states, his tongue firmly in cheek, that a factual equivalent would involve people "even more lost to all considerations of truth, taste . . . or any shred of common humanity."... --Publishers Weekly. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. Book.