John Dunning's "Deadline"

To some ardent bibliophiles ebooks are an irreverent format that is somehow disrespectful of books and their history.   Nothing being so sacred as the written word on paper, the feel of a book in your hand etc.  And don’t misunderstand…. John Dunning is an ardent bibliophile.  That fact is obvious from his Cliff Janeway novels which I have had the pleasure to read over the last twenty years.   What we must realize however is that one of the merits of the ebook format is that we as readers get to discover books we had missed upon their first publication.  Such is the case with “Deadline” c1981 and now re-released in ebook format in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media.  

NetGalley provided me with an ebook copy of “Deadline” for review and I wasn’t disappointed.  John Dunning says in his foreword that this novel took only six weeks to write from start to finish.  One of the fastest novels he has ever written and nominated for an Edgar Award.  He writes from what he knows… the life of a journalist. The novel’s plot was driven by his experiences working for the Denver Post in the late 1960s.

The traveling circus has come to town and there has been a devastating fire.  One of the victims is a small girl whose body is not claimed… What could possibly cause a family to not claim their little girl’s body?  Dalton Walker, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist wants to find out.  As is the case with any journalist this is not the only story he is working on.  As the stories connect, Walker becomes entangled in a decades old unsolved FBI case and the momentum of the novel is established…
Fast-paced action and intriguing characters propel this novel along.  Lovers of suspense fiction will enjoy the timeless themes of corruption and menace.  A short novel and a fast but very satisfying and entertaining read.

Note: this post was originally published on my review blog: "Fictionophile"