In most cases, the reporter is assigned a rather ordinary story, but while investigating the story, something happens, someone mysterious is met, or the reporter has a hunch and what was ordinary becomes a rousing criminal investigation.

In Plain Brown Wrapper by Karen Grigsby, columnist Alex Powell investigates when her former publisher, Everett Carson, who was supposed to receive the Journalist of the Year Award at the annual National Association of Black Journalists Conference, is found dead before the ceremony.

Reporter Jack Morrow returns to his hometown of New York City to report on big city crime and corruption.  His story of a lifetime maybe more than he bargained for when he becomes a suspect in the assassination of the mayor of New York City in Cover Story by Gerry Boyle. Part of a series.

In Rogue's Justice by Thomas Gately, former investigative reporter Michael Carolina returns to Rhode Island from a sailing trip in order to try and find out why someone murdered his girlfriend.  Part of a series.

Tough reporter Britt Montero investigates the murder of Kaithlin Jordan, whose husband is weeks away from execution for her alleged murder ten years ago in You Only Die Twice by Edna Buchanan.

In Resurrection Day by Brendan DuBois, ten years after a nuclear war laid waste to the United States and the Soviet Union, young reporter Carl Landry searches for the killer of a veteran of the war who may have been involved in a horrible conspiracy.

Mismatched sleuths Jerry Knight, a conservative radio talk-show host, and Jane Day, a liberated and opinionated leftist reporter for the Washington Post, investigate when a journalist turns up murdered at a presidential speaking engagement in Press Corpse by Ron Nessen and Johanna Neuman. Part of a series.

In Caught in the Middle by Gayle Roper, Merrileigh Kramer, a young staff reporter for her hometown paper, covers her own story after she finds a body in the trunk of her car.  Part of series.

Former newspaper reporter, now a writer for a weekly magazine, Kay Engles becomes involved with several murders in connection with an archaeological dig her long time friend, Vera Contas, is heading up in the financial district of New York City in Digging Up Death by Triss Stein.  Also look for Murder at the Class Reunion also featuring Kay Engles. 

The grisly death of a 17-year-old boy affects both Steve Rawlins, Minneapolis homicide investigator and his lover, television reporter Todd Miller in R.D. Zimmerman's Innuendo.