Killer Competition

by Tom Kranz

A struggling TV news operation in Philadelphia finds itself with a freelance photographer who is selling video of crimes he's committing and a news director who just did jail time for manslaughter, killing his former boss who also just happened to be a news director. The young staff at Channel 7 is concerned, even scared about their new boss. But Bud Remmick insists everything's different now and has his old friend Karen Sikorsky on his side. Two years out of prison, Bud has repaired his damaged marriage to Maggie and spent time serving his rural Pennsylvania community as a volunteer EMT until Karen scooped him up and got the general manager at Channel 7 to hire him.

It doesn't take long for Bud to catch on to the scam of the freelancer, Bill Klemmer, whose loyalty to his father blinds blurs the lines between good and evil. When his father instructs him to kill a man, then video the crime scene, the police track him down and pursue him to a Jersey shore motel and a violent encounter.

Meanwhile, no less than the politically corrupt Governor of Pennsylvania wants to know why Maggie Remmick, the wife of a convicted felon, is hired as a government official. Maggie’s job performance is top notch but has no bearing on the Governor's pool of patronage flunkies. Bud's old "anger aura" starts to well up as forces out of their control influence both of their lives. The good and bad that struggle for dominance over Bud collide in a conflagration of life and death events that play-out on live television, shining an uninvited light on the Remmicks. In the end, Bud's search for redemption brings him back to basics, but will it be enough to keep him from going back to jail, this time for good?

250 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 12, 2018

About the author

Tom is a Philadelphia native whose 40-year journalism expertise includes radio, television, print and online. He holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from Temple University. He was a New Jersey certified EMT from 1999 to 2021 and served as a volunteer EMT on his local rescue squad in New Jersey. He is still a certified CPR instructor and a life member of the rescue squad.

He worked in Philadelphia radio and television from the mid 1970s until 1991. From 1992 to 2007 he was a producer and senior producer at CBS News. After retiring from the TV news business in 2007, he spent 12 years as director of communications for Chelsea Senior Living and two years as public information officer for the borough of Fanwood, New Jersey.

Tom has written seven books. His single non-fiction book, Liveshot, details his on-scene assignment as a producer for WCAU-TV in West Philadelphia during the ill-fated 1985 MOVE confrontation. During this event, the city attempted to evict the MOVE group from a rowhome but succeeded instead in burning down the house, the entire city block and killing all 11 people inside.

His other six books are novels. Three focus on a married couple, the Bud & Maggie Series, and their struggles with Bud’s sublimated anger and Maggie’s ambition. Two are science fiction stories with climate change as the backdrop, the Earth-Moon Series. His latest work, Wreck and Return, is the story of Griffin Ambrose, a volunteer EMT whose volunteer life and professional life in the TV news business lead to stress, self-medication and a disastrous turn of events that result in a death, injured colleagues, jail and Griffin's exile from EMS. He finds a path to redemption, however, as patients who he helped in his 20 years as an EMT wonder if all the good he did should be erased by one mistake?

Tom resides in New Jersey where he hosts a podcast on creativity and does freelance communications work.