Publisher: Signet
October 2, 2007
Paperback: 304 pages
ISBN-10: 0451222407
ISBN-13: 978-0451222404

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About the Fat City series

A spunky television reporter enters a weight-loss clinic to achieve that "on-air look," but soon finds the inside story on a murder investigation when one of the doctors ends up dead.

Read the first chapter: (uncorrected proof -- do not quote from without checking with the author first. Final, printed version may vary from this text).


I didn’t know it yet, but the Whoopie Pie was ready to explode.

The creamy gob of chocolate cake had been sitting next to me on the passenger seat of my TR6 for hours now, all the way from Boston to Durham, North Carolina. I’m crazy for Whoopie Pies, but so far I hadn’t laid a finger on it. See, the minute I got to Durham I was starting a Diet, a residential weight loss program (read: “fat farm”). I’d brought the Whoopie Pie along for the ride as a Challenge. Sort of like Willpower versus The Pie, mano a mano.

But then…well, just before we hit Durham, the Whoopie Pie started singing my name, Kate Gallagher. Before long it was belting out a veritable fortissimo about how I really deserved a Last Hurrah treat before I started the diet. And suddenly, all I could think about was doing evil deeds involving fudge cake and whipped cream.

I grabbed the Whoopie Pie and stuffed it in my mouth.

Heated almost to a boil from sitting on the sunny car seat, the cream-filled puff burst apart. It went off like a sugar grenade, spewing blobs of custard all over my face. Even the windshield caught some of the white shrapnel.

Serves you right, I thought, wiping frosting from my eyebrow. Zero self-control is precisely what had started me down the road to Durham in the first place.

In the War on Fat, Durham, North Carolina is the nuclear option. The city is home to a half dozen residential weight loss programs, including my destination, the Hoffman Clinic. And I was headed there not a moment too soon. Over the past few years, stress eating and late-night vending machine raids had packed an extra fifty-odd pounds around my hips and thighs. The stress part of the equation was from my job back in Boston, where I work as a news producer. Check that -- where I used to work as a news producer. That job had ended exactly two weeks ago on a Friday, when I got laid off in the latest round of cost-cutting at Channel Nine, my former employer. By some evil coincidence, Mack, the Cheater Formerly Known as Boyfriend, decided to dump me the same week. During our breakup lunch, I’d dragged it out of Mack that he was replacing me with the new teleprompter girl (who, by another evil coincidence, was a size two). It was my week that would live in infamy.

The only thing I had to show for a three-year slice of my life was an underwhelming wad of severance pay and an award I’d won the year before. It was a silver baton, the Dupont Award for Journalism Excellence from Columbia University. My name was inscribed on it -- Kate Gallagher, Special Assignments Producer. But that award and five bucks would buy me a latte vente in the current job market. Investigative producer jobs like mine were getting hard to find. And at fifty pounds up and counting, a new boyfriend was probably going to be hard to find, too.

My cell phone rang with the polymorphic chords of Ms. New Booty, the customized ring tone I’d set up in honor of my trip.

“I hear chewing. Are you eating?” It was my best friend, Brian Sullivan.

“Certainly not,” I said indignantly, forcing down the rest of the Whoopie pie.

“So what if you are?” he laughed. “I’m halfway through a large goat cheese pizza, myself.”

That’s the only annoying thing about Brian: He’s always eating, but stays boot camp trim due to a metabolism that’s supercharged by his six-foot five frame. We’d grown up roaming the streets of South Boston together. Nowadays, Brian is a demolitions expert with the Boston Police Department under my father’s command, Captain James Gallagher. Brian’s gay, but only his family and close friends know it.

“So why don’t you just bang a U-ey and come back home?” Brian said, using Boston slang for making a U-turn. “You don’t need to go to a fat farm, you and your Miss America cheekbones. Half the guys on the squad have asked me how they can get into your pants.”

I paused just long enough to appreciate the bit about half Brian’s squad wanting to bone me.

“That has nothing to do with it,” I said. “The fact is that at thirty percent body fat, I’m obese.”

I glanced down. My butt in its black skirt overflowed the bucket seat of my tiny vintage TR6. It was becoming a tight squeeze. Never mind fitting into your jeans—when you can’t fit into your car anymore, things have gotten totally out of hand. At the rate I was going my next vehicle would have to be something in an extra-large, like an SUV.

“All I’m saying is, you certainly don’t need to lose weight before looking for something else. Or someone else,” Brian went on. “And don’t you dare settle for another jerk like Mack. You wasted an entire year on him, remember? You need to learn how to party with your Inner Player. Just go for it.”

“Who are you, Dr. Phil all of a sudden?” I protested.

“No. But still.”

I hadn’t confessed to anyone, not even to Brian, the real reason for my journey to the land of fat farms. Being laid off from my job had been an ugly wake-up call. It made me realize I’d had enough of life as an underpaid, unsung news producer. The night I was axed, I’d made a solemn vow that my next job would be in front of the camera. It was a simple accommodation to the harsh reality of local TV news. Only the reporters and anchors have any real clout, or real salaries. And I’ve often been told I have the “face” for TV: uber-pronounced cheekbones, plus Technicolor highlights like blue eyes and cascading auburn hair. But below the neck…aye, there was the rub.

As a news professional, I know that you practically have to be anorexic to land your first on camera job, because the camera adds ten pounds (that’s not a myth -- it really does add ten pounds). Sure, later on you can gain weight. But not on that first job. All the women new hires were super-skinny like my friend Mimi, the mid-day anchorwoman. It could be absolutely infuriating to clothes shop with Mimi, because she’d complain that size fours were “cut way too big these days.” But Mimi had lost a bunch of weight to get her first on camera job, and she was a master dieter who knew all the tricks. As a parting gift for my trip to Durham, she’d printed out all of her personal diet and exercise tips and had them bound in a special book.

I’d need all the dieting advice I could get. It was now or never time for me to blast off fifty pounds of Whoopie Pie, fast. As soon as I digested the one currently in my stomach, that is.

Brian’s sigh came loud and clear across the phone. “All right I give up,” he said. “I can see you’re determined to starve in the Steel Magnolia state. But watch yourself down there.”

I knew what Brian was referring to. The night before, he and a few friends had sent me off in traditional Irish style, by playing drinking games at Molly’s, our favorite South End pub. At one point, we’d all bumped mugs in a drunken toast. The plastic steins had bounced off each other, sloshing beer all over the table.

Looking like he’d seen a ghost, Brian had pounced on the spillage with a napkin.
“When you spill your beer while making a toast, you invite the Devil to the table,” he’d announced solemnly. (Brian’s always spotting bad luck omens in everyday things, especially after a couple of rounds of Guinness.)

But we were stone sober now. Plus, I was driving with the TR6’s convertible top down, and the sky around me was a brilliant blue. All of which made it easy to dismiss my friend’s antiquated notions about the Devil.

“You’re always predicting doom and gloom, Brian, but nothing ever comes of it,” I said into the phone.

“And I want to keep it that way. Remember, I work on the bomb squad.”

“Well, you don't have to worry about me down here,” I reassured him, then said goodbye and clicked off.

But the truth was, even I was a tad superstitious. You probably can’t help it when you’re raised in the heart of the Shamrock.

I adjusted the rear view mirror to see what was coming up behind me on the road. If there were such a thing as the Devil, I hoped he wouldn’t find me in North Carolina.


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