Deadline

Mac #12

by Thomas B. Dewey

Deadline sends Mac to a small town on a tight deadline to save a boy from execution for a brutal murder. Mac makes a beautiful job of it despite the townsfolk's violent hostility.

Genres: Mystery

223 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Thomas Blanchard Dewey was an American author of hardboiled crime novels. He created two series of novels: the first one features Mac, a private investigator from Chicago, the second features Pete Schofield.

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stranger in Town

The thirteenth book in Dewey's Mac detective series is a quiet, studious detective puzzle. Don't open this expecting furious action until things really boil over towards the end. This is a story about a stranger in a small town where no one wants to cooperate with him and few are willing to even speak with him.

A young teenage girl was brutally murdered. The culprit was readily caught, convinced to confess, tried, and sentenced. Now, with days before the execution date, Mac is sent to the small town where everyone knows each other and no one wants the long nightmare to continue. His job is to ferret out some mitigating evidence of mental instability. He pokes around and gently prods here and there. This is a well-written and absorbing piece of fiction, decidedly hard to put down.

[Karl]

Thomas Blanchard Dewey (Elkhart, Indiana, March 6, 1915 – Tempe, Arizona, April 1981), he also used the Pseudo-name Tom Brandt and Cord Wainer.

An Inner Sanctum Mystery.
First printing First Edition 1966.

-- Mac novel series --

"Every Bet's a Sure Thing", 1953
"Prey for Me", 1954
"The Mean Streets", 1954
The Brave, Bad Girls", 1956
"You've Got Him Cold", 1958
"The Case of the Chased and the Chaste", 1959
"The Girl Who Wasn't There", 1960
"How Hard to Kill", 1962
"A Sad Song Singing", 1963
"Don't Cry for Long", 1964
"Portrait of a Dead Heiress", 1965
"The Big Job" (short story), 1965
"Deadline", 1966
"Death and Taxes", 1967
"The King Killers", 1968
"The Love-Death Thing", 1969
"The Taurus Trip", 1970

Mac is a private investigator from Chicago.

[nomitnnamssarg · Rating 2 out of 5]

4/10

I don't really know what to say about this. It was utterly boring and irrelevant, mostly. I geniunely did not at all care for any of the characters or the mystery itself. Plus, this was really sexist and ableist.
4 points still because it had its good and humorous moments and was fairly entertaining.

[Andy Oerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Suspenseful, ticking-time-bomb of a novel. I read this not only in one day—but in one sitting.