Deadline

I'll start with my dislikes: The novel consisted of highly detailed writing that made it a laborous read for me. Addressing social issues (abortion, divorce, liberalism vs. conservatism) shifted the novel's premise miles away from the mystery, and I often forgot previous events and characters because of this.

My likes: very eye-opening book, even as a work of fiction. The downfall of medical ethics was very intriguing. It is inspirational fiction that touches on all those sensitive issues regarding political correctness. There were moments when I could have stopped reading this book but I continued to read because the themes within challenged my stance of social issues. The actual story has many heartwarming moments I enjoyed.

If you show more like highly descriptive, detailed writing with a strong Christian message you will enjoy this book. show less

The bad news: I downloaded the e-book version, and I don't know if the semantic noise I found was because of that format or inherent within the paper version. The semantic noise I ran into was around a dozen typos and several instances of possessive nouns lacking the apostrophe. Although I was not proofreading per se (if I were, I probably would have found more errors), the fact that the errors occurred distracted part of my concentration on the story.

Having said that, the crime story was entertaining and the underlying Christian theme was artfully woven into the crime story in a compelling manner that is sure to resonate with evangelical Christians. Although the descriptions of Heaven were somewhat unorthodox, nevertheless they were show more not objectionable, and will certainly give the reader pause to consider Heaven and its possibilities. On a similar vein, the description of Hell was vivid and should give readers even more pause to consider their afterlife destination if the escape that is detailed in the book is ignored.

Finally, despite the typos and punctuation problems, the author does something excellent that I have not seen any other author do, and that is use words that are in the common lexicon versus other author's too often attempts to impress readers with multi-syllable words of uncommon usage. The author's use of common language----not necessarily simple language, but the language of everyday use----makes for an easy read.

Five stars, for sure! show less

This is the first book I borrowed from the YMCA's book exchange shelf and I picked it primarily because I knew the author's name. This book was published in the mid 1990s. Publishing does have trends and does evolve over time, so it's possible that this book was good in its time--but reading it now, to me it seems to suffer from not knowing what story it wants to tell.

There's a murder mystery; clashes and discussions regarding liberal points of view and conservative points of view, including why most diversity groups seem to tolerate everything but Judeo-Christian views; ProLife/ProChoice and how abortion affects the women who have them and the men whose women have them; an organized crime angle; manipulation of the transplant list by show more doctors and other medical professionals/committees to move some people up higher on the list and give them a better chance of receiving a donor organ; the author's idea of what heaven and hell will be like . . . and those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

I was a bit surprised to see that this book is listed as a series book with the series being Ollie Chandler. Ollie Chandler is a character in this book (the police detective investigating the homicides) but he didn't feature as much as Jake Woods did in this book. show less

The first in the Ollie Chandler series, although he doesn't feature as the main character. Plenty of action in the beginning but does tend to get bogged down a little with issues such as abortion, fundamentalism, sex education in schools, ethics in medicine. However the mystery and intrigue keeps you reading until the end. Interesting take on what happens to believers and unbelievers when they exit this life which should be challenging to both.

The author does a great job of keeping the reader on the edge of their seat attempting to discover the "Who dunnit?" At the same time he doesn't keep you on the edge of your seat speculating about the point he is trying to make. Well written although slow moving in a few places. If you're looking for an interesting portrayal of what Heaven might be like, here's a refreshing viewpoint, presented by Randy Alcorn that stays pretty close to the information provided by the Bible, leaving you plenty of room to consider the implications. Well worth the time spent enjoying this book...provided you don't have to meet a Deadline!

Read ebook version. This book was not really what I was expecting when I started to read it. I thought it would be more centered on the mystery and detective. However, I ended up enjoying the book a lot. It is well written with believable dialogue. The message is great. I would like to read the other 2 books featuring Ollie Chandler.

An excellent; story; I give the book closer to a 5 than a 4 as it made me think and feel wonderful and new about a great many things especially specific aspects of The Word; the story was good as well but sometimes felt liked it digressed just a bit at times;, loved the examples of the families and how they interacted; both in Heaven and on earth; was probably my favorite part actually;