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Death on a Deadline by Joyce St. Anthony

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I didn't know this was number two in the series but in a way that's fine. I'm generally tired of the ways book ones set up non-professional sleuths. In this case it probably would have been different. Irene Ingram is a young woman taking over her father's paper while he's in the south Pacific as a war correspondent in 1942. So she has some very legit reasons to be sleuthing as a reporter even if it's for a small town paper in central Pennsylvania. At that time, those papers were still big deals.

The big county fair is still going on in spite of war time rationing and St Anthony draws on real world history for much of this including the plot. They are going to have a visit from some B and C list actors, musicians etc to sell war bonds. Coming to Prospect PA is the comedian/tour organizer Paul Davis, Angel Harrison whose sister runs the local beauty salon and her awful husband, Freddie Harrison , both are up and coming actors as are Belinda Fox the vamp who Freddie is sleeping with and Kirk Allen hometown boy done good and hoping to do better in Hollywood. Clark Gable was promised as it's not too far from his hometown of Cadiz OH but sadly he's a no show

Very quickly the cheating Freddie is dead in a dunk tank and Ava and Angel want Irene to help find out who did it before Angel is blamed. Irene has it in good with the local sheriff as once her fiance Bill is back from the war, the sheriff, Walt, will be her father in law.

Walt of course isn't too keen on her investigating (being she's a woman in 1942 and she nearly got killed last time) It took her a bit longer than it took me to figure out what Freddie was up to and why he died.

The characters are well realized and even though I figured it out fast (I read far too many of these things apparently) I still very much enjoyed this book. The only reason I didn't give it five stars is I hate it when a sleuth saves up clues and doesn't tell the sheriff (even if they're friends) that drives me nuts. At least the old chestnut of that leading to the sleuth getting in trouble with the villain didn't happen.

I would definitely get more of this series



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