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Deadlines
"Deadlines" launches into action when a land-use activist, Beverly Bancroft, is slain on a stretch of California shore. The killers, who disguise her death as an accident, work for Cornu Point, an equestrian resort seeking to boost profit from public land along the coast.
A young reporter, Sebastian Palmer, finds Bancroft's death could be a clever murder. He's assisted by a new friend, Elle Jatob, a beautiful, athletic Brazilian who yearns to be a cop.
Palmer's newspaper assigns veteran columnist Colm MacCay to Palmer as mentor. MacCay, a wild alcoholic, fails to perform. Palmer soon becomes the next victim.
MacCay convinces Jatob he can revive his investigative skills. She helps him uncover the land-grab that prompted attacks on Bancroft and Palmer.
"Deadlines" ends on the old Bancroft estate. MacCay and Jatob must face a determined killer and a lawman who might not be on their side. Their lives are at stake, as well as fate of lands on the California coast.
A young reporter, Sebastian Palmer, finds Bancroft's death could be a clever murder. He's assisted by a new friend, Elle Jatob, a beautiful, athletic Brazilian who yearns to be a cop.
Palmer's newspaper assigns veteran columnist Colm MacCay to Palmer as mentor. MacCay, a wild alcoholic, fails to perform. Palmer soon becomes the next victim.
MacCay convinces Jatob he can revive his investigative skills. She helps him uncover the land-grab that prompted attacks on Bancroft and Palmer.
"Deadlines" ends on the old Bancroft estate. MacCay and Jatob must face a determined killer and a lawman who might not be on their side. Their lives are at stake, as well as fate of lands on the California coast.
243 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2010
About the author
Paul McHugh
2 books1 followerPaul McHugh was born during a Category 4 hurricane in South Florida. His father had to load rocks into a WWII surplus jeep to keep it on the road while driving his mother from the Everglades to a rural hospital.
Since then, Paul McHugh’s ongoing whirlwind tour has included:
• Six years of training to be a Catholic priest during his teens.
• A summa cum laude degree in English (with an emphasis on poetry) from FSU.
• Self-education in journalism in long-form print and video formats.
• Independent production of nature documentaries for PBS, including The Eel – Life of a Threatened River and Return of the Desert Bighorn.
• Decades of successful freelance story-telling in the realms of outdoor sport, resource use, the environment and adventure, published in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and many other journals and periodicals
• 22 years as outdoor features writer and editor for The San Francisco Chronicle.
• Publishing books, including: The Search for Goodbye-to-Rains (novel, 1980); Wild Places (non-fiction, 1994); The Islands of San Francisco Bay (non-fiction, with James Martin and Michael Lee, 2006); Alcatraz – the Official Guide (non-fiction, 2007); Deadlines (novel, winner of NIEA and BAIPA best mystery awards, 2010); and his political thriller, The Blind Pool, 2017.
• A lengthy roster of personal outdoor adventures and achievements lists his participation on the first U.S. Kayak Surfing Team as it won a world championship in Ireland in 1988, completing two running marathons, and paddling 270 miles of the Grand Canyon to celebrate his 50th birthday.
• Presently, Paul McHugh lives on the San Francisco Peninsula with his wife Dawn Garcia (director of the JSK Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University), where he focuses on writing novels, poetry, and outdoor-themed non-fiction.
Since then, Paul McHugh’s ongoing whirlwind tour has included:
• Six years of training to be a Catholic priest during his teens.
• A summa cum laude degree in English (with an emphasis on poetry) from FSU.
• Self-education in journalism in long-form print and video formats.
• Independent production of nature documentaries for PBS, including The Eel – Life of a Threatened River and Return of the Desert Bighorn.
• Decades of successful freelance story-telling in the realms of outdoor sport, resource use, the environment and adventure, published in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and many other journals and periodicals
• 22 years as outdoor features writer and editor for The San Francisco Chronicle.
• Publishing books, including: The Search for Goodbye-to-Rains (novel, 1980); Wild Places (non-fiction, 1994); The Islands of San Francisco Bay (non-fiction, with James Martin and Michael Lee, 2006); Alcatraz – the Official Guide (non-fiction, 2007); Deadlines (novel, winner of NIEA and BAIPA best mystery awards, 2010); and his political thriller, The Blind Pool, 2017.
• A lengthy roster of personal outdoor adventures and achievements lists his participation on the first U.S. Kayak Surfing Team as it won a world championship in Ireland in 1988, completing two running marathons, and paddling 270 miles of the Grand Canyon to celebrate his 50th birthday.
• Presently, Paul McHugh lives on the San Francisco Peninsula with his wife Dawn Garcia (director of the JSK Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University), where he focuses on writing novels, poetry, and outdoor-themed non-fiction.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 12, 2023
Hope I haven’t passed the deadline for leaving a 5 star review for Deadlines!
Published 13 years ago, but I just discovered this journalistic treasure. Journalism in San Francisco is at the center of this murder mystery, written by one who knows… the author was a featured writer for the SF Chronicle for a couple decades. As a horse lover, I blanched at a stallion being used as a murder weapon, but the author knows horses, and what they’ve historically been trained to do.
Is it too late for a sequel? There were a couple of characters I’d like to read further about in their own stories.
Published 13 years ago, but I just discovered this journalistic treasure. Journalism in San Francisco is at the center of this murder mystery, written by one who knows… the author was a featured writer for the SF Chronicle for a couple decades. As a horse lover, I blanched at a stallion being used as a murder weapon, but the author knows horses, and what they’ve historically been trained to do.
Is it too late for a sequel? There were a couple of characters I’d like to read further about in their own stories.
July 24, 2010
How well you like "Deadlines" depends in large part on how well you like the voice of its narrator and protagonist, burned-out newsman Colm MacCay. MacCay, like many older, urban reporters I've known, talks with a plummy, theatrical grandiloquence that's hyper-literate, sourly humorous and hugely obnoxious. (If that last sentence annoys you, then you'll know what I mean.)
I didn't care for MacCay's voice, but that doesn't mean I didn't care for MacCay — a down-on-his heels columnist for a San Francisco paper who's down but not quite out as an alcoholic in late middle age. Busted down to the reporter ranks in his paper's most recent downsizing, MacCay does the usual moaning about how newspapering doesn't have quite the balls or bones of the glory days — but is also surprisingly, unsentimentally honest about what a worthless mess he's become. There's little romanticizing here of the alcoholic artist as a nobly tragic figure.
MacCay is paired with college-age intern Sebastian Palmer on a story about a death that appears to be more than an accident, given that it happened at a Northern California coastal resort area that the focus of a politically entangled land grab by a shadow corporation. When Palmer is taken out by a vicious near-fatal attack, MacCay teams with a young female friend of Palmer's in what is not only an effort to find out what happened and who's behind it, but to give MacCay one last shot at pulling himself up from the mire of sotted self-pity and salvage himself as a person and a professional.
I haven't said the word "mystery," even though "Deadlines" is billed as one, because it really isn't one. There are no surprise villains here; in fact, there aren't really any villians at all. At least few that we're allowed to see. The killer remains offstage after the first pages, and later baddies wander onstage in the final pages without having been previously introduced to any memorable effect. Readers are whisked through a series of set pieces that feature various eccentric personages (now the plumminess is taking over this reviewer!) as one-dimensional plot points. Few characters are developed to satisfying depth.
No, everything in "Deadlines," plot included, is largely subordinate to MacCay's personal journey of redemption — and his exhaustive oversharing about it. San Francisco and the coastal communities — including an oddly Brigadoon-like village called Castello — hardly register as settings when stood against MacCay's interior Bosch canvas of dried-out delights and ample expositions about newspapering, politics, the city and the environment. To me, he came off in the end as a relative who annoys you to no end but still somehow inspires your affection.
I'm not sure that means that I want to spend much time down the road in his presence, though. This book was a struggle to read — something that I gave up on and set down several times, only to pick it up again and plod through another few dozen pages, much as I did in college with "War And Peace." Given that it represents itself as a crime novel, I expected better pacing and balance, better hewing to the conventions of the genre.
Paul McHugh clearly is a good writer, and just as clearly knows his territory. Maybe too much so, as "Deadlines" often feels like a memoir that's trying to break free from a novel. Given what I'd read of his background, that's probably a book I'd be more eager to read than another patience-testing, glacially-paced MacCay tale.
(2.5 stars is a more accurate representation of my review. The three stars are out of shared empathy as a fellow on-his-way-out news hack.)
I didn't care for MacCay's voice, but that doesn't mean I didn't care for MacCay — a down-on-his heels columnist for a San Francisco paper who's down but not quite out as an alcoholic in late middle age. Busted down to the reporter ranks in his paper's most recent downsizing, MacCay does the usual moaning about how newspapering doesn't have quite the balls or bones of the glory days — but is also surprisingly, unsentimentally honest about what a worthless mess he's become. There's little romanticizing here of the alcoholic artist as a nobly tragic figure.
MacCay is paired with college-age intern Sebastian Palmer on a story about a death that appears to be more than an accident, given that it happened at a Northern California coastal resort area that the focus of a politically entangled land grab by a shadow corporation. When Palmer is taken out by a vicious near-fatal attack, MacCay teams with a young female friend of Palmer's in what is not only an effort to find out what happened and who's behind it, but to give MacCay one last shot at pulling himself up from the mire of sotted self-pity and salvage himself as a person and a professional.
I haven't said the word "mystery," even though "Deadlines" is billed as one, because it really isn't one. There are no surprise villains here; in fact, there aren't really any villians at all. At least few that we're allowed to see. The killer remains offstage after the first pages, and later baddies wander onstage in the final pages without having been previously introduced to any memorable effect. Readers are whisked through a series of set pieces that feature various eccentric personages (now the plumminess is taking over this reviewer!) as one-dimensional plot points. Few characters are developed to satisfying depth.
No, everything in "Deadlines," plot included, is largely subordinate to MacCay's personal journey of redemption — and his exhaustive oversharing about it. San Francisco and the coastal communities — including an oddly Brigadoon-like village called Castello — hardly register as settings when stood against MacCay's interior Bosch canvas of dried-out delights and ample expositions about newspapering, politics, the city and the environment. To me, he came off in the end as a relative who annoys you to no end but still somehow inspires your affection.
I'm not sure that means that I want to spend much time down the road in his presence, though. This book was a struggle to read — something that I gave up on and set down several times, only to pick it up again and plod through another few dozen pages, much as I did in college with "War And Peace." Given that it represents itself as a crime novel, I expected better pacing and balance, better hewing to the conventions of the genre.
Paul McHugh clearly is a good writer, and just as clearly knows his territory. Maybe too much so, as "Deadlines" often feels like a memoir that's trying to break free from a novel. Given what I'd read of his background, that's probably a book I'd be more eager to read than another patience-testing, glacially-paced MacCay tale.
(2.5 stars is a more accurate representation of my review. The three stars are out of shared empathy as a fellow on-his-way-out news hack.)
July 16, 2011
Cool murder mystery (based in the Bay Area) from the point of view of a burned out reporter trying to regain his mojo by cracking a whooper of a case that he slowly becomes entangled in. Started slowly but eventually kicked in...
December 22, 2010
Read with Book Club. Interesting mystery, but you know "who done it" right from the beginning. Uses the San Francisco Bay area as a back drop.
January 4, 2014
pretty good. drunk journalist makes good.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews