Rating: 4 stars (Spotlight Review)
The dawn of the electronic age has newspapers poised to go the way of the dinosaur. E-zines, blogs and online reading have all but made the printed word extinct.
The latest casualty, The Seattle Free Press, once a titan of free speech, finds itself sotto voce with each passing year and in danger of being silenced for good. One man, the columnist, born with ink in his veins and knows no other medium capable of transmitting the information he was born to print, fights with everything he has to keep the presses moving.
Trying his best to pull a column out of his hat—one of three for the week—the columnist pays a routine visit to Troy Hardesty, a successful hedge fund manager. Seeming a bit distracted, Troy responds to prompts regarding a company called Olympic International, giving the columnist a few off-the-record tidbits, while gazing into the horizon of his office balcony’s 20-story view. Suddenly it’s the columnist’s turn to answer a question: what does he know about 11:11. The question, asked quickly and quietly, disappears in the same manner.
Back on street level, the columnist reflects on Troy’s somber mood and the bits of information culled, before moving on to ponder 11:11. Moments later, he is pulled from his reverie just as Troy Hardesty’s body appears before him, having completed its 20-story plunge. From this moment on, the columnist’s life will never be the same.
Returning to the Free Press offices, word of the newspaper being sold or closed is making its way down the ranks. However, approaching deadlines leave little time to worry about the future. Now contemplating Troy Hardesty’s death, the columnist must figure out who killed him, where Olympic International ties in and what 11:11—which has suddenly become a recurring theme in his life—means.
Joining forces with cub reporter Amber Burke, who is investigating the disappearance of two young girls, brings the duo an unlikely connection when they arrive at the apartment of a young man who knew the girls and find him swinging from the apartment rafters. A tattoo of 11:11 visible on his ankle.
The columnist’s life takes a turn for the surreal when he’s picked up by two men in a black SUV claiming to be federal officers. Taken to a warehouse for questioning, he released, although the second time he won’t get off so easy. The deeper he digs the worse things get, until everything around him starts to fall apart and people he cares about begin to die.
Trapped in some type of governmental plot, targeted for knowing more than he does, with no place to hide and no one to trust, the columnist must uncover the truth. His life depends on it.
Written with incredible intensity, Deadline Man is an absolute thrill ride that leaves you no choice but to hang on tight through each frantic twist and hairpin turn. Jon Talton does an incredible job of keeping the reader guessing and the pages frantically turning as we follow the columnist through his personal nightmare to its death-defying conclusion.
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Paperback: 250 pages
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press; 1 edition (May 1, 2010)
ISBN-13: 978-1590587232