Sat 19 Mar 2022
THOMAS B. DEWEY – Deadline. Mac #13. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1966. Pocket 55002, paperback, 1968. Carroll & Graf, paperback, 1984. Presumably expanded from the short story “Deadline” appearing in Sir!, August 1968.
For a hardboiled PI detective novel, which this one definitely is, it’s a little different from most hardboiled PI novels – but probably not different enough to be unique, one of a kind. Mac – that’s the only name we ever know him by in all 17 of his novels – has been hired by a panel of psychologists and social workers, not to prove a young boy on death row is innocent – he’s already confessed – but to prove that he’s legally insane, and to persuade the governor to issue a stay of execution.
Most of Mac’s cases take place in the down and dirty streets of Chicago. (The second and last two take place in Los Angeles.) Deadline takes place in the small farming community of Wesley, Illinois. Dominating the town is the local John Deere dealer, and since it was his daughter who was brutally murdered, the man most certainly does not want Mac to stop the execution.
Mac does not have much to work with. His “client†is socially challenged and it is difficult for him to give any coherent information about the day of the girl’s killing. Her best friend, still in high school, has an emotional disorder. Mac’s only ally in Wesley is Miss Adams, a teacher in the local high school, and since she is dating the girl’s father, her help is only reluctantly provided at best.
Mac is beaten up at least once in this one, and chained up in a barn so he can’t do any damage to the case against the boy about to be executed. The title, Deadline, is certainly an appropriate one. Mac’s efforts to figure out what exactly did happen come down to the last minute. Somewhat unfortunately, the clue that’s the key one is rather an obvious one. (I spotted it, after all.)
There’s a hint of attraction between Mac and Miss Adams, but it’s clear by book’s end that anything more than that is not going to happen. That’s an ending that quite probably happened to him more than once.
March 19th, 2022 at 10:49 am
I do not know the book, but the issue is one that has been near the front burner for some time. The question arises: As most people who are mentally or emotionally challenged do no harm, to anyone, why is derangement under the law a kind of get out of jail free card. Judgment should and must be rendered based on behavior, not an often fallacious diagnosis. Not any diagnosis.
March 19th, 2022 at 11:48 am
Mac doesn’t go very far in thinking about such matters. He’s the kind of PI who once he accepts a job, does it quietly and efficiently, without asking questions. Dewey the author also finesses the question by having the convicted boy having been bullied into confessing, and [PLOT WARNING] not having done the killing at all.
The plot warning may actually not be needed. I assumed that to be the case after reading only the first chapter. (It takes Mac nearly to the end of the book before he does.)
March 19th, 2022 at 12:53 pm
I have a much higher opinion of DEADLINE than Steve does. For my money it’s among the best of the Mac novels. It also contains a wonderful throwaway bit on p. 18 of the hardcover edition, in which Mac observes “a lanky, oddly misshapen fellow” mopping the floor of a drugstore (though you probably have to be a scribbler like me to fully appreciate it):
“He had the downcast, furtive expression of a [mentally challenged] personality and his mouth was busy nearly all the time, making words nobody could hear.
“Probably a free-lance writer, I thought, who finally found a steady job.”
March 19th, 2022 at 1:25 pm
Oops, I see I failed to mention the fellow in my review. He turns out to have a significant role in the book. Besides the passage you quoted, Mac is patient with him and manages to get from him the clue he needs to crack the case.
But even if not, yes, you’re right. That’s a great quote. It produced a big smile from me, too.
March 20th, 2022 at 12:58 am
There was an episode of one of the anthology series based on a Dewey novel and Hugh O’Brian played Mac, the character being given the last name Robinson. I’ve seen it used in relation to Mac since, but don’t know that Dewey ever approved.
Mac. Bart Spicer’s Carny Wilde, and of course Lew Archer all brought a more humanitarian even humanistic turn to the private eye of the 50’s a social conscience that would become a major strain in the genre eventually.
I liked this one a bit more than you, but I’m pretty much a Dewey fan whether Mac, Pete Shofield, or Singer Batts.
March 20th, 2022 at 11:00 am
I would add Robert Martin’s Jim Bennett to David’s list.
July 5th, 2023 at 10:06 am
Barry said (quite awhile ago now):
“As most people who are mentally or emotionally challenged do no harm, to anyone, why is derangement under the law a kind of get out of jail free card.”
If you’ve seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, an ‘insanity plea’ can carry a much worse sentence than than a regular criminal sentence. In general, you can’t get out until you prove that you’re no longer dangerous to the public. That’s a tough thing to prove–especially since the shrinks at the mental institution are risking their careers if they let you out and you commit another crime.
This particular story, of course, is about a ‘death sentence’. So of course the commutation to a ‘life sentence’ would be theoretically ‘less harsh’. On the other hand, why are there so many murder-suicides? In general, many people think that as long as they kill themselves, they somehow escape punishment. So it’s not clear to me anyway that a ‘life sentence w/o parole’ is much better than a ‘death sentence’.
Two more things. One: Life w/o parole isn’t a ‘get out of jail free card’. It’s a ‘stay in jail forever’ card. In the movies we frequently see ‘temporary insanity’ (like “Primal Fear” and “Anatomy of a Murder”) where someone is insane for the moment of the murder only and is found to now be perfectly normal and sane and no danger at all to the public. That just doesn’t happen. Maybe it’s happened once or twice in the history of the universe. But it pretty much never happens in real life. It only really happens on TV and the movies.
Other point: The reason an incompetent person is generally not sentenced to death is not because they are somehow innocent. Rather, according to the US Supreme Court, it is because “Executions of mentally retarded criminals are ‘cruel and unusual punishments’ prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.”