The Talk Show Murders

...Peter Steinfels CAN'T say I usually read suspense novels, for the same reason I don't drink diet soda-refreshing while it's going down but then there's the aftertaste-yet really the author and title of this one were too much to resist, given the fact that I was once on a talk show with Steve Allen and afterwards I briefly contemplated murdering him, which I didn't do, of course, out of cowardice, family responsibilities, a strict upbringing, and fear of getting my hands dirty, or so I thought at the time, not knowing that sooner or later I would get to review one of his books, or maybe I did know, tucked way in the back of my head, since it was in fact one of his books, a book on white-collar crime called Ripoff, that Steve Allen was pushing (and still is: it's mentioned on page three of The Talk Show Murders) that day on Ronald Ziegler's mid-day Washington TV talk show where I was supposed to debate, more or less, Jeane Kirkpatrick, then (1979) a Georgetown political scientist, about my own book, The Neoconserva-tives, and after Allen wound up his segment with Ziegler and while Ms...

...PETER STE1NFELS is Executive Editor of Commonweal...

...Really thought you'd get away with it, didn't you...

...oh, I see that we've run out of time, folks, so gee, Steve, it's been wonderful having you here on the show to talk about your newest book...

...Kirkpatrick and I were slipping into place during the commercial break and the technicians were clipping microphones to our garments, good old Steve started to eat a Hershey bar, which was damnably clever in view of the fact that Kirkpatrick and I started stiff and slow, warily stretching our comments to impossible lengths for television, maybe thirty seconds, so that meanwhile back at the Hershey bar a basic law of physics was at work, namely that chocolate held in a warm hand under the glare of stage lights will transform itself into a gooey mess running down the fingers of a skillful entertainer at approximately three times the pace of the "debate" between Professor Kirkpatrick and myself, and the possessor of said melting chocolate bar is required to contort his arm and bend his REVIEWERS Daniel C. maguire, a member of the theology faculty at Marquette University, is the author most recently of The New Subversives: Anti-Americanism of the Religious Right (Crossroad...

...hand just so, to keep the chocolate from running off onto his clothes, and to duck his head and crook it around to catch the dangerous blob deftly with his mouth, then give his fingers a few dainty licks and, if he is a Steve Allen, punctuate all this marvelous stage business with some oh-so-relaxed, self-deprecating humor, all of which is natural drama, so that compared to our intellectual circling and feinting, Steve Allen and his Hershey bar were a barroom brawl, a shootout at OK Corral, a police chase, a helicopter rescue, the TV audience being, so to speak, in the palm of Allen's hand, which is exactly what he had in mind the night before when he had practiced-could there be any doubt about it?-for hours before the mirror, cupping his fingers, twisting his wrist, smacking his lips, timing his jokes, and using up dozens of Hershey bars, unless, of course-why hadn't I thought of it?-this was something he'd perfected years ago and Professor Kirkpatrick and I were only the last in a long line of saps, easy marks, stage victims of this man who now has the temerity, imagine it, actually to write a book about...

...DAVID H. RICHTER teaches at Queens College of the City University of New York...

...He is the author of Fable's End and Forms of the Novella...