BY SARAH HERRING
Television journalist and mystery writer Hank Phillippi Ryan always looks forward, whether it is in her long broadcast career or writing novels.
“You never known what is around the corner,” Ryan told the estimated 100 people gathered at an event sponsored by the Martin Institute March 21.
Ryan, a USA Today best-selling author, talked about her newest book, The House Guest- a story of psychological manipulation that explores the dark heart of marriage and friendship – and her start in the broadcast industry in the 1970s.
Ryan described The House Guest as “Gaslight meets Thelma & Louise” and noted she is already wrapping up yet another book.
“When people ask me what my favorite novel I’ve written is, I answer with the one I haven’t written yet,” Ryan said.
Ryan has written 15 books and won numerous awards for both her work as a journalist and as a novelist. She won the prestigious mystery writing awards, such as five Agathas, five Anthonys and the Mary Higgins Clark Award. She also is the on-air investigative reporter of WHDH-TV in Boston and has won 37 Emmy’s and other journalism awards.
However, there were times while writing fiction that Ryan said she questioned what she was doing.
“Why am I writing fiction? Why am I not doing something important. Then I thought this is exactly why I am doing it. I chose to write fiction with the idea that I was a storyteller,” Ryan said.
Ryan started in the news business after college. She applied for a news job at a radio station WIBC in the 1970s even though she had no experience and had taken no journalism courses.
She said she persuaded the boss to hire her by noting the station, which had to renew its license, had no women in the news department. She wound up being the first.
From there, she moved on and up over the years through hard work and persistence.
She noted it was through the work of women in the 1970s, who broke many of the job barriers, that opened the doors to opportunities for women today.
Ryan said she is sometimes surprised by her own writing and writes the way she likes to read: no graphic violence, no graphic sex and no obscenities.
She recalled how emotional she was after she completed her first book.
“When I finished my first novel, I called my husband into the room and typed the end. I burst into tears because at that moment I had done something I always wanted to do,”