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 enlarge | Author: Randy Alcorn
Publisher: Multnomah Publishers
Category: Book
List Price: $14.99
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Rating:  98 reviews
Sales Rank: 16153
Media: Paperback
Edition: Repack
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 448
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.3
ISBN: 1590525922
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781590525920
ASIN: 1590525922
Publication Date: May 1, 2006
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| Customer Reviews:
 Too Political, But Engaging July 7, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In Deadline, Randy Alcorn attempts quite a lot, in fact maybe too much. I found myself myself saying to the books engaging hero, newspaper journalist Jake Woods, that no self-respecting newspaperman could be as stupid as he is. It seems he can't do anything right.
In addition every calamity on the Christian spectrum besets him. His atheist doctor friend is engaged in late trimester abortions and numerous other corrupt medical practices. Jake cheated on his wife leading to his divorce and has now conveniently convinced himself that his wife, daughter and mother are better off when he doesn't have to exert any energy to see them or tend to their needs. In addition to all this his daughter gets pregnant, threatens suicide, and winds up coming down with AIDS. His newspaper is overrun by a cadre of politically correct homosexual reporters and editors wielding great power. It's like every issue that could possibly affect Christians is addressed in this novel.
In spite of this there was something compelling about the hero. Although I got really mad at Jake and wondered how he could be such a renown editorialist, as he seemed clueless a lot of the time, I found I was emotionally invested in his story.
It's just that the political stuff got completely overwhelming and some scenes seemed contrived. When Jake gives his daughter's sex-ed teacher a good verbal thrashing, his deceased friend's teenage daughter just happens to be there with a past pro-sex education, pro-abortion editorial in her hand that he wrote on the subject and thrusts it at him calling him a hypocrite. I didn't believe for a second that this mixed up girl carried Jake's past editorial around with her and was able to produce it at that exact moment to hoist Jake on his own petard. There was some dialog and other scenes equally unbelievable.
 only part way into it but it is very good June 2, 2008
I have read the books years ago but I have to say sitting in traffic has become a lot more fun. I am looking forward to the next two books on CD!
Another great Alcorn Mystery April 20, 2008
All the way through this book I was trying to guess who was out to kill Jake. That is only a small piece of the action. The real story is going on a journey with Jake as he grows and learns more about himself and his maker.
Ray Ruppert, Author of "The Sovereign Reigns, or Does He?" "The Sovereign's Last Battle" and "Revelation: A Layperson's Reflections"
 Well-written mystery December 1, 2007
After the car accident that led to the deaths of columnist Jake Woods' two best friends, Doc and Finney, Jake receives a message that seems to indicate that Doc's loss of control over his vehicle was caused by someone else's tampering with it. Wanting to make the killer pay, he goes to Ollie Chandler, a homocide detective that owes him a favor, for help. Jake then uses his experience as an investigative journalist to attempt to aid Ollie.
However, Jake's search for answers about his friends morphs into a search for truth. When his teenage daughter becomes pregnant and contracts HIV due in part to the bad influence of the school nurse, Jake is forced to come to terms with both the results of his liberal beliefs as well as his own parenting failures. Don't wince. Thankfully, Alcorn is a capable enough writer that Jake's change of beliefs about abortion and sex education, as well as his acceptence of Christianity, do not seem painfully forced in. His writing skills also come in handy in the descriptions of Finney's new life in heaven and the one glimpse of Doc's defiant existence in hell. The subject matter of Finney's "introductory course" to heaven, taught by his former guardian anger Zyor, can prove a great motivation for Christians to make the most of their life on earth. One warning for some readers: the past sexual sins of his characters are not a subject Alcorn avoids, though there is no written pornography in "Deadline."
The plot twists and turns the whole way through the book. Jake originally believes the murderer to be a rabid pro-lifer who was after former abortionist Doc. But that angle doesn't pan out, and his search is further complicated by two FBI agents who claim that Doc might have accidentally gotten involved with organized crime and swear Jake to absolute silence about the investigation. The two also warn that Jake is being followed. In the end, readers will almost certainly be surprised by the group of characters responsible for both the deaths of Doc and Finney as well as Jake's near-killing shortly before the book's end: though Alcorn's forshadowing is obvious upon reading the book a second time, the plot twists kept me turning pages.
 Seeing things in black and white November 19, 2007
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
I first read "Deadline" when I was 19 and in college, and I really liked the book -- the story line part of it. I realized from the get-go that this was no mere novel, but a herald of the Christian faith as well. And since the author makes this so blindingly clear throughout, I have no issue with it. What I DO have an issue with is the way he paints his characters as black and white. Conservative Christians are painted as goodhearted, kind, loving, people, while homosexuals, liberal-thinking doctors, irreligious journalists, sex education teachers, and Democatic politicians are soulles, irreverant monsters who are not living a liberal lifestyle, but revelling in the type of behavior that the author thinks will someday send them to hell. Conservative Christianity is all right to promote, but when put forward the world as strictly black and white, not in belief but in people, the book stops becoming a message of Christian hope and becomes blatant Christian propaganda. In the book, one of the characters makes a note that liberals refer to her not as "pro-life" but by the more negative epithet "anti-abortion". Alcorn's novel becomes the same thing, it can't be viewed as "pro-Christianity"; it can only be referred to as "anti-liberalism". Unfortunately for his message, Alcorn's propaganda is off-putting to someone who does not share his viewpoint. Rather than make me happy to be a Christian, it gave me a feeling of dissettlement, that I and everyone else who read it was being judged by the author. Let he among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone. So unless you see things as Mr. Alcorn does in black and white...think twice about picking up this book.
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