What do you think?
Rate this book
Deb Ralston #6
Deficit Ending
Deb Ralston copes with an unemployed husband, takes care of her newborn baby, and follows the scant leads left by a gang of killer bankrobbers
- GenresMystery
180 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1990
21 people want to read
About the author
Lee Martin
14 books5 followersThere is more than one author with this name
Pseudonym of Ann Wingate
Anne Wingate, born in 1943 as Martha Anne Guice, is a mystery writer currently living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Most of her mysteries are set somewhere within Texas. She is an adult convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and this sometimes shows in her works. She grew up in the Disciples of Christ Church.
Pseudonym of Ann Wingate
Anne Wingate, born in 1943 as Martha Anne Guice, is a mystery writer currently living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Most of her mysteries are set somewhere within Texas. She is an adult convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and this sometimes shows in her works. She grew up in the Disciples of Christ Church.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 9, 2014
Good plot. Some swearing, Good characters, lots of drama.
Deb Ralston 42 grandmother Just had her first baby. Her older 3 children were adopted with Hal the youngest at 16.
She has to go back to work on Monday. So she is running errands. She goes to bank and has Cameron the baby when the bank is held up.
She was there so she got the case.
Deb Ralston 42 grandmother Just had her first baby. Her older 3 children were adopted with Hal the youngest at 16.
She has to go back to work on Monday. So she is running errands. She goes to bank and has Cameron the baby when the bank is held up.
She was there so she got the case.
January 1, 2025
Deficit Ending by Lee Martin is the sixth book of the Deb Ralston mystery series set in contemporary Fort Worth, Texas. Deb Ralston is a detective on the Fort Worth Police Department Major Case Squad. She's present (with her baby son Cameron) at the first of a spree of bank robberies. It becomes her case, even though her maternity leave isn't quite over yet. It is just barely possible that somewhere in the universe there might have been someone who was less enthusiastic about returning to work than I was.
She's stretched to exhaustion by the frequent late night call-outs. In my experience people who have not killed each other by 2AM will generally wait until five or five-thirty to do it. Not to mention the constant demands of her baby, who won't take a bottle yet or settle into a consistent sleep pattern.
She's a likable protagonist with normal work-life-stressors (too much to do and nowhere near enough hours to do it) and a dry wit.
Very few people allow their heartfelt beliefs to be altered by anything so insignificant as a fact or two.
Home. Where, just like yesterday, my husband and my son were going to be sitting patiently waiting for me to come home and prepare supper. The long-range solution might be to introduce Harry to a cookbook. Cookbook, this is Harry. Harry, this is a cookbook. Harry, this is my kitchen. Forget it.
Police departments float on a sea of paperwork. I had officially been back at work for five minutes and already I was three reports behind.
He was just about exactly as all right as I was. And that wasn't very. To anyone who didn't know me I probably would appear perfectly calm, even inhumanly, unfeelingly calm considering the circumstances. Anybody who knew me would know better at a glance.
A police radio is rarely if ever silent. But people who are around police radios all day learn not to hear the radio at all unless it is saying something that person needs to hear. Thus, any police officer hears whatever signal or code means "robbery in progress" or "officer needs help" in that area; other than that about all anybody is likely to hear is his or her own call signal.
What the Texas Banking Commission expected to be able to about the robberies that we weren't already doing was a little vague to me, but then people on major committees are like that. Mainly they want to know what we have done and what we are doing. It does not occur to them that what we are doing is having a meeting with them when we could be out working on solving the case.
The five-pointed star in a circle pinned to the gray chino work shirt would say "Ranger" to any Texan, and the six-inch barrel on the Colt Cobra on his hip says this and that too. What it says is not likely to be forgotten.
Deb manages to juggle her responsibilities, follow the clues and her intuition. She figures out who the robbers are, but in her tiredness, fails to call for backup. Suddenly she's in grave danger.
She's stretched to exhaustion by the frequent late night call-outs. In my experience people who have not killed each other by 2AM will generally wait until five or five-thirty to do it. Not to mention the constant demands of her baby, who won't take a bottle yet or settle into a consistent sleep pattern.
She's a likable protagonist with normal work-life-stressors (too much to do and nowhere near enough hours to do it) and a dry wit.
Very few people allow their heartfelt beliefs to be altered by anything so insignificant as a fact or two.
Home. Where, just like yesterday, my husband and my son were going to be sitting patiently waiting for me to come home and prepare supper. The long-range solution might be to introduce Harry to a cookbook. Cookbook, this is Harry. Harry, this is a cookbook. Harry, this is my kitchen. Forget it.
Police departments float on a sea of paperwork. I had officially been back at work for five minutes and already I was three reports behind.
He was just about exactly as all right as I was. And that wasn't very. To anyone who didn't know me I probably would appear perfectly calm, even inhumanly, unfeelingly calm considering the circumstances. Anybody who knew me would know better at a glance.
A police radio is rarely if ever silent. But people who are around police radios all day learn not to hear the radio at all unless it is saying something that person needs to hear. Thus, any police officer hears whatever signal or code means "robbery in progress" or "officer needs help" in that area; other than that about all anybody is likely to hear is his or her own call signal.
What the Texas Banking Commission expected to be able to about the robberies that we weren't already doing was a little vague to me, but then people on major committees are like that. Mainly they want to know what we have done and what we are doing. It does not occur to them that what we are doing is having a meeting with them when we could be out working on solving the case.
The five-pointed star in a circle pinned to the gray chino work shirt would say "Ranger" to any Texan, and the six-inch barrel on the Colt Cobra on his hip says this and that too. What it says is not likely to be forgotten.
Deb manages to juggle her responsibilities, follow the clues and her intuition. She figures out who the robbers are, but in her tiredness, fails to call for backup. Suddenly she's in grave danger.
August 16, 2024
This one confused me. First, the fingerprints on the driver's seat belt buckle: of course they were right-hand prints, why did they keep saying that was awkward???? The driver's seat on the left, the seatbelt going from the door to the middle of the car, I always buckle with my right hand! I could not for the life of me make that make sense! I even googled images of Yugos to confirm that their seatbelts hadn't gone the other direction! And then that turned out to be a red herring anyway, so just ignore it. And then I really could've used a summary at the end of the use & movement of all the cars involved! But there was none. Also I wanted the epilog to say what happened to that 4-y.o. boy.
October 24, 2019
While the main character, Deb Ralston, a police officer with a 9-week old baby, shares characteristics of Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone and Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum, she lacks the charisma of neither. While reading the book I kept getting the feeling that the author polished it off in an afternoon while watching TV soap operas. Kind of a blah read.
July 21, 2018
3 1/2 Stars
May 31, 2023
Deb Ralston, Fort Worth police detective, is caught up in a bank robbery, and watches helplessly as the teller is taken hostage, and is later found executed. Deb juggles the investigation of what turns into a string of robberies and murders with the management of her 16-year-old son Hal, her infant son Cameron, and her husband Harry, who has to change careers unwillingly. Well done.
Read
January 8, 2010Fictionwise multiformat ebook
Read
January 9, 2010Fictionwise multiformat ebook
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews