Verdict: Great story, well-written

When Brock Bailey’s limousine crashes through a bridge railing and disappears into Pittsburgh’s murky Monongahela River, the popular Pennsylvania governor is presumed to be dead. Intensive rescue efforts produce four mangled bodies, but the Mon River does not yield a governor.  Left behind are a very public and ruthless son, a very private mistress and the prize they both crave: Bailey’s Keystone Oil fortune.

The governor’s disappearance becomes an obsession of Bailey’s hometown newspaper editor and a bumbling state police commissioner. What they learn is a Bailey family secret so shocking and devastating that one tries to exploit it and the other hesitates to publish it.

Tonight in the Rivers of Pittsburgh exposes the turmoil and duplicity of Pennsylvania’s political power family from the heinous kidnapping that propelled Brock Bailey to the governorship, to the forbidden young woman who dominated his hidden life, to his rudderless son, thrust into the political void caused by the governor’s reported demise.

The story of Bailey’s legacy winds through the remote Allegheny National Forest, to the State Capitol in Harrisburg, through the Gettysburg Battlefield and Philadelphia and past all whistle-stops in between. Meanwhile, the nation’s most baffling political mystery floats lifelessly down the rivers of Pittsburgh.

Reviewed by IR Staff