'The Hot Half Hour,' 1958 quiz-show novel

[Kniwt]

While reading old issues of Television Digest from 1958, I came across a reference to the novel "The Hot Half Hour," a lightly satirical look at big-money quiz shows just before the big scandals broke. Turns out the whole book is available for free at the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/hothalfhour008566mbp

The author is Robert Foreman, who worked at the BBDO ad agency. It's a very fast read at just over 200 small pages -- even faster if you skip over the B plot about the love story. My quick review: It's not great; in fact, it's just barely good, if even that, but it's an interesting historical artifact.

[weaklink75]

I agree it's not too good, but a little weird that a potential contestant tries to get the producers to tip him off on the answers when in fact the opposite actually occurred shortly after the book was published...and a nice section on the perils of a live shoot..

[Kniwt]

I agree it's not too good, but a little weird that a potential contestant tries to get the producers to tip him off on the answers when in fact the opposite actually occurred shortly after the book was published...and a nice section on the perils of a live shoot..

It's also interesting that the book is fairly blatant about the producers "controlling" the game by writing purposely tough questions to dispose of unwanted contestants, which I believe had not yet been widely acknowledged at the time.