Clare Carlson is staring down the barrel of the Big Five-Oh and doesn’t like what she sees.

She worries about the impact of age on her television journalism career — particularly the on-camera scoops she lives for. She frets about her sex life, which is non-existent, for now; her relationship with her long-lost daughter, undergoing her own divorce, which pains Clare because she’s oh-for-three in the marriage game herself; and, the undeniable fact her life’s a train wreck unless she’s pursuing a Big Story.

She also hates her boss and the corporate tool sent to oversee Clare’s very own Channel 10 newsroom, where she serves as news director when she isn’t on camera herself. Yep, after chewing on all of the above as a main course, turning the Big Five-Oh has all the appeal of a bowl of rancid cherries and curdled milk for dessert.

Fortunately for the unsinkable, wise-cracking protagonist of author R.G. Belsky’s sixth Clare Carlson mystery, Broadcast Blues, the news gods have smiled upon her and dropped another juicy murder in her lap.

This one’s got all the bells and whistles — the car bomb killing of an NYPD cop-turned-avenging-angel-investigator who specializes in chasing down rich, wayward husbands; a client list bound to rattle the cages of the wealthy and powerful; a billionaire philanderer whose wife hired the murder victim to catch him in flagrante delicto; and, the overripe scent of crooked cops at the highest levels.

Sex, money and murder. Corruption that could sink New York’s leading gubernatorial candidate, who happens to be a former police commissioner. Red meat for our gal Clare. Another chance to do double duty as newsroom director and newsroom star.

Fans of Clare Carlson won’t be disappointed with Broadcast Blues. Belsky’s latest serves up the best of Clare — her one-liner darts, her naked distain for ratings gimmicks, her contempt for authority and her bedrock faith in the power of a big story told truly and well. It also gives readers a fly-on-the-wall glimpse of a television newsroom in action, a world of crazed and committed characters Belsky knows well from his award-winning career as a print and TV journalist.

You might want to make sure your chiropractor is on speed dial, though. That’s because Belsky is a past master of neck-wrenching plot twists and other unexpected delights. The shocker ending of this book puts Clare in harm’s way and has the distant potential of putting the reader in traction.

As for the Big Five-Oh, Clare would rather wisecrack her way past this milestone and wait on the news gods to deliver another scoop-o-rama. They always do. And that makes everything copacetic for our gal Clare.

NOTE: Dick Belsky’s latest Clare Carlson mystery, BROADCAST BLUES, goes on sale Tuesday, Jan. 2 on Amazon, Nook, Kobo and other online and bricks-and-mortar outlets.