No mystery to Al Roker's literary appeal

Al Roker was 7 years old when he read his first mystery novel.

"It was a Hardy Boys book," the longtime Today show weatherman says. "From there, I graduated to Sherlock Holmes, and I've been hooked ever since. I've always enjoyed a good mystery."

Now that Roker is himself a mystery novelist, that's what he most hopes readers think of his work, that it's a good mystery.

"It's like my philosophy about going to the movies," he says. "After I've plunked down my hard-earned cash, I do not want to leave the theater feeling worse than when I went in. That's the way I feel about my books. All I really want is for people to feel a little better and to have enjoyed themselves reading it."

Roker will be at Borders in Dallas on Wednesday to meet fans and sign copies of The Midnight Show Murders (Delacorte Press, $26). It's the second in a series that showcases Billy Blessing, a celebrity chef, morning-show personality and amateur sleuth.

We chatted with Roker last week about his side career as an author.

Being a fan of the genre is one thing, but actually writing a mystery novel is another. How did you get started?

"I've written a couple of cookbooks and written a couple of books on fatherhood. In the back of my mind, I always thought, 'Someday I'm going to write a mystery.' I had this idea for a crime-solving chef who's on a morning show, but I didn't know how to plot it out. I'd start and I'd write myself into a corner. Then somebody teamed me up with Dick Lochte, who's a terrific mystery writer, and he kind of gave me a road map. So we were off to the races."

Is it a bit of wish fulfillment that Billy is a celebrity chef?

"Yeah, I think so. I would love to have a restaurant. But it's one of the riskiest investments you can make. Especially here in New York. Even if it's successful, it's such a huge commitment of time, I could never do it. But in a perfect world, or in a fantasy world, if I wasn't doing this, I would be a restaurateur."

After the executive producer turned up dead in the first book, The Morning Show Murders, did your executive producer on Today start looking at you warily?

"Well, he hasn't been so quick to cut my time, so that's been good."

Given that Billy lives in the world of television, there are a lot of showbiz shenanigans in your books. Are they real or merely the product of your imagination?

"Some are fictional. Some are based on fact, just slightly tweaked so that nobody sues me. Of course, this book takes place in the world of a late-night talk show. If you look at what happened with Conan O'Brien and Jay Leno, if you wrote that as fiction, nobody would believe you. Their world kind of makes my world of morning TV pretty mundane."

Who are some of your favorite mystery authors?

"Carl Hiaasen and Janet Evanovich are the masters of the comic mystery novel. Lee Child, with his Jack Reacher character, just scares the hell out of me. I love Harlan Coben. He's a master of grabbing you with the first chapter. Walter Mosley is just amazing at evoking a time period. What's great about Linda Fairstein is she takes the murder mystery and grafts it on top of a history lesson about New York City each time out. And James Patterson just writes a great page turner."

Will there be more Billy Blessing novels?

"We're hoping. We've already started working on No. 3. So we'll see."

Would you ever consider killing the weatherman in one of your books?

"No, no. The morning-show weather guys are just so goofy, nobody wants to kill them."