Television and now the Internet have made stars of all sorts of people. Whether it’s a popular documentary host or a YouTube personality, people bring those stars into their homes. It’s not always easy being that famous, especially when one’s trying to do something simple like go to the grocery store or walk the dog. But of course, it can be a lucrative life. Television and Internet personalities can make for interesting crime-fictional characters, too.

For instance, Julian Symon’s A Three-Pipe Problem features television star Sheridan ‘Sher’ Haynes. He plays the lead role in a popular Sherlock Holmes series, with Basil Wainwright as his Watson. Haynes enjoys playing Holmes, but he’s not been happy with the direction the series has been taking. He has a different, more purist vision of what the show should be like. He’s getting outvoted, though, by the show’s creators and producers. Then, Haynes gets the idea that if he solves a real-life murder, he can show the Powers That Be that his vision of the show is the better one. There’s been a recent spate of murders called ‘the Karate Killings,’ and Haynes decides to try to solve them the way Holmes solves cases. Plenty of people try to dissuade him, but Haynes persists, and although he runs into his share of problems, he does solve the case.

Lynda La Plante’s Above Suspicion is the first in her Anna Travis series. In the novel, Travis has recently been promoted to Detective Sergeant (DS), and has joined the Murder Squad at Queen’s Park, London. The squad has just gotten to work on the case of seventeen-year-old Melissa Stephens, whose murder closely resembles the unsolved murders of six other women. Before long, the evidence begins to point to a very popular television actor, Alan Davis. He’s beloved by his fans, and just about to make the move from television to film. The police don’t have a lot to go on, and there’s no absolute proof that Daniels is the killer. So, they’ll have to be very careful, because Daniels is smart and has money and good legal representation. Besides, he could be innocent. For Travis, it’s a difficult and dangerous introduction to solving murders.

In Cat Connor’s [Whiskey Tango Foxtrot], we are introduced to twenty-year-old media influencer Alexandra ‘Alex’ Fowler. She’s making good money from companies that pay her to promote their products on her various social media sites, but she’s run into trouble. She witnessed a murder and is preparing to testify in court. However, she’s in great danger, and will need protection until the trial begins. That’s where David ‘Crockett’ Crocker of Australian Intelligence, comes in. He’s living in the Wellington area, where Alex is holed up. He recruits Veronica ‘Ronnie’ Tracey, PI, and Ben Reynolds, who’s with American Intelligence, to help him keep Alex safe. It’s not going to be easy, though. For one thing, Alex refuses to give up her social media connections, even temporarily, despite the fact that it’s dangerous for her to be online. For another, Alex is demanding and difficult to work with even at the best of times. Still, the team makes plans and sets things up to look after Alex. It’s not long, though, before they suspect that something is not quite right about their charge. The more they try to protect her, the more danger they seem to find.

There are other crime-fictional sleuths, too, who are television personalities. For example, one of Martin Edwards’ very popular series, the Lake District novels, features Daniel Kind. He’s an Oxford historian who’s also the host of an extremely popular television show. He gets burned out from the relentless pace of that life, and takes a place in the Lake District, where he meets Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) Hannah Scarlett. She heads up the Cumbria Constabulary’s Cold Case Review Team. As the series goes on, we follow each of their perspectives as they work on the different cold cases that come up.

Paddy Richardson’s Rebbeca Thorne is the Wellington-based star of Saturday Night, a popular television show. In both Traces of Red and Cross Fingers, research for her show leads to past murder cases that still haunt in their way. She gets the information, talks to the people involved, and sometimes, gets in real danger as she tries to find out the truth. One interesting thing about these books is that they also have sub-plots that show what life is like behind the scenes at popular shows. There are deadlines, ego clashes, and the sense that if you aren’t the very best, there are hungry people behind you who are just waiting for their chance at the top.

There’s also Hannah Dennison’s Katherine ‘Kat’ Stanford. When we first meet her in Murder at Honeychurch Hall, she is the host of the very popular show Fakes & Treasures. She’s very popular herself, so much so that she decides to step away from the show and open an antique business with her mother Iris, as the two had always planned. A phone call from Iris changes everything and sends Kat down to the small Devon town of Little Dipperton. There, she and her mother are drawn into a case of murder and old sins. And as the series goes on and Kat settles into life in Devon, she gets involved in other cases, too.

Television and Internet personalities are people, just like the rest of us. But it’s sometimes easy to forget that when we watch them on shows. As crime fiction tells us, though, that fame and (often) fortune doesn’t always keep them safe…

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Billy Joel’s No Man’s Land.