WHEN DAY BREAKS

Clark’s tenth continues her decorous TV-land carnage by killing off the well-hated co-anchor of KEY to America as she prepares to jump ship for the competition.

After a chilling rehearsal that involves tossing a Great Dane and a toaster into a swimming pool, somebody gives Constance Young the same treatment the weekend before her planned debut on Daybreak. As usual in Clark (Dancing in the Dark, 2005, etc.), the suspect pool is as deep as the Yankees’ bench. Constance’s assistant, Boyd Irons, and her coworkers find her beyond high maintenance. Her housewife sister, Faith Hansen, resents her stinginess. Her beau, video-game czar Stuart Whitaker, is rattled because she won’t return the unicorn amulet he filched from The Cloisters. Ex–Wall Street warrior Jason Vaughan is convinced that she’s ruined his life. Luckily, KEY to America producer Annabelle Murphy, The KEY Evening Headlines anchor Eliza Blake and KEY cameraman B.J. D’Elia keep one step ahead of the benighted police, soon digging up the one and only clue to the killer, which Clark confidently displays a hundred pages before her truthbusters can figure out what it means.

All right, so this isn’t a world-class whodunit. What remains are the simple pleasures of dishing on media types as petty as your teenagers; stripping back the clichés of TV news to reveal the juicier clichés beneath; and knowing that you’re not going to miss ten seconds of sleep over this carnival of crime.