Review: The Deadline by Ron Franscell

Neeley Gilmartin, imprisoned in 1948 for the murder of a little girl, is let out of prison in 1996 because he's dying of tuberculosis. Wracked with pain, he still smolders from the injustice done to him all those years ago, and pleads with the newspaper editor, Jefferson Morgan, to clear his name and find the one who really killed the child.Morgan finds the request abhorrent, and is unable to believe that Gilmartin could be innocent. He refuses to help, until he does a little research and realizes that Gilmartin could indeed be telling the truth-the local sheriff won't release the trial records; the library has the microfiche files in a safe; Morgan's own newspaper clippings of the event hint at a cover-up by the town fathers at the time of the murder. Everything points to Gilmartin's innocence, and when someone burns down the newspaper office -- apparently to kill Morgan himself -- Morgan is sure of it.But what else will Morgan lose before he can print the truth?

I received this book via Story Cartel to give an honest review.

After reading the blurb I knew that this book was going to be a good one. The book starts off strong and keeps going until the end. I honestly had no clue who the murderer was until it was pointed out and I enjoy that in a book that is full of mystery and suspense.

When the book starts off you are witnessing the murder of a little Indian girl, and then we precede to having Gilmartin confessing to the crime. But the question you end up asking yourself later on is did he really commit the crime? Gilmartin comes back to the little town where this tragedy happened and he asks Jefferson Morgan to look into clearing his name, being as Morgan is editor of the local newspaper. Of course Morgan knows that a majority of cons always say they are innocent but there is a chance that Gilmartin may be telling the truth. But what Morgan uncovers is something that will causes the town to have him not looking into the past. What is being hidden?

Morgan races against time to find the truth as to what happened to Aimee. But will he find out before Gilmartin dies, or before he loses everything that he has built up for himself and his wife.
You want a good mystery book, then I say get this one! This is a new author for me and I am already liking his work so I do believe I will be checking out more of his books to see if the writing is just as good.

A lifelong journalist, Ron Franscell is the bestselling author of 14 books. He is currently working on his next true crime for St. Martin's Press.
Over the years, Ron's books have earned high praise from bestselling authors such as Ann Rule, John Lescroart, Vincent Bugliosi, C.J. Box, Howard Frank Mosher, and Warren Adler. His writing has been compared to Truman Capote, Robert Olen Butler, Norman McLean, Cormac McCarthy and Charles Frazier. Now, meet the author, who now lives in San Antonio, Texas.
And THE DARKEST NIGHT (also titled FALL in a 2007 hardcover) continues to be a bestselling true crime. This intensely personal nonfiction about a monstrous crime that touched his life as a child has been hailed by authors such as Ann Rule and Vincent Bugliosi, as well as critics, as a direct literary descendant of Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood."
But Ron's books aren't confined to true-crime. THE SOURTOE COCKTAIL CLUB is the true story of an extraordinary -- if slightly macabre -- road trip with his teenage son to the Yukon in search of a mummified human toe .. and a father's reassurance that he hasn't become irrelevant to his son.
His CRIME BUFF'S GUIDE books are quirky travel guides that take true-crime and history-trippers to some 400 outlaw- and crime-related sites all over the USA. Editions include Texas, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Washington DC, and Maryland.
His debut novel, ANGEL FIRE, was published by Laughing Owl in 1998, and reprinted by Berkley (Penguin/Putnam) in 2000. His popular mystery, THE DEADLINE, was re-published in 2014 by WildBlue Press, followed by a sequel, THE OBITUARY. His book reviews and essays are regularly published in many of America's biggest and best newspapers, such as the Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Denver Post, San Jose Mercury-News, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and others.
DELIVERED FROM EVIL (2011) explores the entangled lives of mass-murderers and their victims, tracing the lives of 10 ordinary people who survived some of America's worst massacres. Auspiciously, it debuted on the day a deranged young gunman killed six and wounded 13 at a Tucson supermarket in one of the most shocking crimes of our day