Kathi Reed returned to the program to discuss her latest novel "Trouble for Rent." This book is a prequel to Reed's debut effort "Banking on Trouble." In this one Annie Fillmore is running her mom and pop video rental store in a small town in Ohio. The year is 1990 and the video rental business was at the height of what was to be a brief but highly lucrative run.
Annie's battling the competition. She has decided to start selling music to augment her bottom line. A young customer has offered to help her out with the music side of the business and throughout the story there's some unresolved romantic tension between the two of them.
The mystery in this one involves a video rental. A disgruntled customer returns a video that she had rented from Annie. This customer has a legitimate complaint; in the middle of the movie "Cinderella" a part of the video suddenly turned into something else. There's some disturbing footage in that section that was not the creation of the studios of Walt Disney.
Annie placates the customer then queues up the tape and watches it. Yes, there is something very strange about this film. It appears that someone has recorded over part of the tape and their entertainment contribution consists of a home-made sex video that concludes in what appears to be the fatality of one of the participants.
The local police are notified. They consider the footage to be dubious and unworthy of further discussion. Their skeptical response leaves Annie in a bit of a frothy dither. This provides her with the pretext to put on her sleuth hat and conduct her own private and rather amusing investigation.
A BOOK NOOK BONUS
We had some extra time at the end of the program. I went back through the archive and pulled out an interview I recorded in September of 1994. At that time I was hosting "Afternoon Excursions" which was a music show that aired on WYSO every weekday afternoon. I conducted a brief interview on the telephone that day with an author who was passing through Dayton on book tour. She was the first author I ever interviewed. Before there was a Book Nook. This brief conversation became the seed that rapidly sprouted into the program that you know today.
The Book Nook on WYSO is made possible by five local library systems in southwest Ohio: the Greene County Public Library, Washington-Centerville Public Library, Clark County Public Library, Dayton Metro Library, and Wright Memorial Public Library.
