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Fatal Deadline
At a time when traditional newspapers were in a freefall decline, and the home mortgage industry had collapsed, along comes a young reporter whose journalistic ideals lead him into a life-threatening trap, simply by covering the statewide real estate beat for a suburban weekly.
Christopher Gilley, 19, was the real deal. Even at an embryonic point in his career, he possessed reporting traits that were the envy of veterans at the struggling Maryland Inquirer, “That kid’s got a knack,” they admitted.
Chris’s priorities in his first real newspaper job were to simply to pull himself out of poverty with a real job, write good copy, and make his mother proud back home in their small town in the mountains.
But, his humble world would be desperately rocked at high noon on May 14, 2007. He watched in horror the bombing and destruction of the 13-story, blue-glass First Union Credit & Mortgage (FUC&M) office in King’s County. The office tower was the much-despised headquarters of the state's most notorious predator home mortgage firms.
After Chris filled three stories in rapid order on the bombing and the body of a man found murdered in the destroyed building, his managing editor removed him from covering the story further. People had seen Chris and his colleague fleeing the scene. Police tagged him as a suspect.
When the editors failed to follow up to his satisfaction, Chris secretly tried to find and report the truth of the bombing and murders on his own. The idealistic boy was ill prepared, however, to deal with hardcore gangs, drug dealers, racist lenders, strippers, thugs, and certain crafty urban women, the likes of which he had never met back home.
While trying to hunt down and report the identity of the guilty, the young hunter, Chris, becomes the hunted. Perpetrators of the crimes catch the boy snooping on them.
Follow Chris as he fumbles through his investigation, while he matures as a man, a lover, and investigative reporter attempting to reveal who really killed Johnny "Boss" Martin.
Christopher Gilley, 19, was the real deal. Even at an embryonic point in his career, he possessed reporting traits that were the envy of veterans at the struggling Maryland Inquirer, “That kid’s got a knack,” they admitted.
Chris’s priorities in his first real newspaper job were to simply to pull himself out of poverty with a real job, write good copy, and make his mother proud back home in their small town in the mountains.
But, his humble world would be desperately rocked at high noon on May 14, 2007. He watched in horror the bombing and destruction of the 13-story, blue-glass First Union Credit & Mortgage (FUC&M) office in King’s County. The office tower was the much-despised headquarters of the state's most notorious predator home mortgage firms.
After Chris filled three stories in rapid order on the bombing and the body of a man found murdered in the destroyed building, his managing editor removed him from covering the story further. People had seen Chris and his colleague fleeing the scene. Police tagged him as a suspect.
When the editors failed to follow up to his satisfaction, Chris secretly tried to find and report the truth of the bombing and murders on his own. The idealistic boy was ill prepared, however, to deal with hardcore gangs, drug dealers, racist lenders, strippers, thugs, and certain crafty urban women, the likes of which he had never met back home.
While trying to hunt down and report the identity of the guilty, the young hunter, Chris, becomes the hunted. Perpetrators of the crimes catch the boy snooping on them.
Follow Chris as he fumbles through his investigation, while he matures as a man, a lover, and investigative reporter attempting to reveal who really killed Johnny "Boss" Martin.
402 pages, Paperback
Published August 4, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 23, 2019
The good: if you can get past its (numerous) rough edges, there is a good story hidden in this book. Berberich clearly drew upon his years of journalism to paint a picture of a small newspaper in the wake of the Internet and the housing market collapse. Characters are convincing, the plot is good, and there are few inconsistencies. I definitely enjoyed this read, overall.
The bad: Fatal Deadline needed more editing, even if just some proofreading for typos, before being published. It appears that this book is self-published, which is admirable, but I really wonder what it could have been with a major publisher's editors.
The ugly: there were definitely times when I wondered whether the constant objectification of women was intentional, perhaps conveying the main character's youthful hotbloodedness, or if it was projection from the author. I'd like the give Berberich the benefit of the doubt here, but either way it got old and distracted from the story.
The bad: Fatal Deadline needed more editing, even if just some proofreading for typos, before being published. It appears that this book is self-published, which is admirable, but I really wonder what it could have been with a major publisher's editors.
The ugly: there were definitely times when I wondered whether the constant objectification of women was intentional, perhaps conveying the main character's youthful hotbloodedness, or if it was projection from the author. I'd like the give Berberich the benefit of the doubt here, but either way it got old and distracted from the story.
May 24, 2018
This story follows Chris Gilley, a rookie reporter for a Maryland newspaper, who is thrust into perhaps the most important event in the history of The Maryland Inquirer. Berberich paints this zany but talented protagonist with bright colors as Gilley makes his way through corruption, greed, politics, and his own inadequacies to get the story right despite the objections of his peers and supervisors. For anyone looking for a realistic view of both the collapse of the housing market and the real workings of a daily newspaper, this novel is a must-read.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews