Review--The Deadline by Ron Franscell

[khudecek]

This book was AWESOME! It was a mystery until the end and when I got to the end, I cried. It's easy to make people laugh and a whole lot harder to make people cry.

The story starts with Aimee Little Spotted Horse being dumped into a river on August 2, 1946. The alleged killer confesses to a life sentence in prison in lieu of going to the electric chair.

Fast forward about fifty years and the alleged killer, Neely Gilmartin, gets out of prison and pays Jeff Morgan, the editor for the Bullet, a visit and tells him he isn't guilty and wants to prove it. To add to the difficulty of finding the real killer, Jeff is on a deadline because Gilmartin is riddled with cancer and is down to just a couple of weeks to live. Gilmartin wants his name to be cleared before he dies.

Jeff is a seasoned newspaperman and had worked in Chicago as a crime reporter and knows that all convicts say they're innocent so he didn't believe Gilmartin at first but decided to see if there was any truth to his story

It doesn't take long for Jeff to discover there is a big coverup going on over this little girl's murder even fifty years later. As the story progresses, you come up with potential suspects but the true killer isn't revealed until the very end.

The story is filled with twists and turns and events that point toward who and why but the ending is still a surprise.

The book is well-written,thought out and an exciting story overall.