DEATH ON A DEADLINE

Newspaper editor Irene Ingram has barely recovered from her near-fatal involvement in helping solve a murder when death arrives again.

Irene is running her father’s paper, the Progress Herald, while he’s serving as a war correspondent and her fiance is in training for service in World War II. The biggest news in the small town of Progress, Pennsylvania, is the arrival of Hollywood stars for the war bond drive. Hairdresser Ava Dempsey, whose sister, a minor movie actress, claims to know all the latest gossip, announces that they can expect Clark Gable. Ava’s beautiful sister, Angela, is at odds with her actor husband, Freddie Harrison, whose claims of undying love are undermined by his numerous affairs. The death of a neighbor’s son brings the war close to home and makes the locals more eager to buy war bonds even though the closest they come to Gable is a series of minor players like Angela, Freddie, and Kirk Allen, who’s become virtually unrecognizable as the former Eugene Allen since he left town and morphed into a handsome man set on an acting career. When Freddie turns up dead in the dunk tank at the local carnival, Irene jumps in to help her future father-in-law, Police Chief Walter Turner. Angela, who threatened her cheating husband, is an obvious suspect, but so are many of the other performers who were less than fond of Freddie. Freddie’s little black book, which contains code names and sums for people he was blackmailing, opens up a new and dangerous line of inquiry.

A warmhearted tale of a small-town attempt to aid the war effort, complicated by greed, jealousy, and murder.