<!--
	Title: (MARKETALK: Reviews) Deadline
	Author: Andrew Christie
	Source: Softalk, v2(12)
	Date: August 1982
	Transcription by Steve Derby
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**Deadline**. By David Lebling and Marc Blank. A millionaire
philanthropist has been found dead of an apparent drug overdose
in his library. You, the chief of detectives, have received a
letter from the attorney of the deceased requesting that you be
present at the reading of the will and have a look around while
you're there. There is also the matter of the possible existence
of a new will, made by the dear departed immediately prior to
his depeirture, but subsequently, shall we say . . . misplaced.

You are armed with an inspector's casebook, excerpts of
suspect interrogations, the report of the medical examiner,
and a packet of "tablets found near the body" (physical evidence).

If the Mystery Writers of America gave an award for Best
Fiction in Software, *Deadline* would win in a walk. Of course, it
has little competition, but besides being a well-written program
(with a vocabulary of more than six hundred words,
full-sentence commands) , it is well *written*. This is an elegant
mystery, with its roots in Agatha Christie rather than Mickey
Spillane. Virtually all the suspects have you, the detective, outclassed
by a mile in poise, class, and resourcefulness, and they
love to let you know it in a number of subtle ways. You are
bound to feel more like Lieutenant Columbo than Nick or Nora
Charles as you muddle about these haunts of the very rich.

The parameters of your investigation are the entire house
and grounds, and the authors have loaded the whole estate into
their program, down to the last garden hoe, toothbrush, and
ancestral portrait. It's a real place, and every object in it is
really there. It is a big program, though its speed (machine
language) belies its bulk. Its sentence-comprehension ability
can require painstaking prompts on the placement of the verb
in relation to the subject, and results in an occasional non
sequitur response, but once you get the hang of it, things can
become rather chatty. If the program can't answer, it always
tells you why, and it demonstrates a laconic wit in anticipating
a lot of the sillier commands that may float into your head during
the frustrating passages of the game.

Those passages are many. It's easy to feel lost and helpless
in *Deadline*. There is no treasure; you have no weapons, no adversaries,
and no quest — save for the truth and evidence to
back it up. Your surroundings are of the familiar, mundane
world and are largely inert; it's totally up to you to make sense
of the world in which you find yourself.

The disciplines required in *Deadline* are like those of no
other adventure. You don't get to see a point score mount encouragingly,
and you can't even know if you're on the right
track. You need to have a real grasp of deductive reasoning
and a feel for minutiae. Linear thinking and direct action will
get you zip. Your success is dependent on how strong a case
you can make based on your accumulated evidence.

The variables for subsequent plays of the game are somewhat
restricted — the facts of the murder, the method, and the
culprit don't change — but even though it's always the same
mystery, you are not likely to get a conviction your first time
through, and you'll have to go back and reconstruct events
again, searching for the evidence that will clinch your case.
Therein lies the variety of Deadline. For anyone who ever
loved a mystery — and who has a couple days free — it's indispensible.

<p class="smaller"><em>Deadline</em>, by David Lebling and Marc Blank, Infocom (55 Wheeler
Street, Cambridge, MA 02138; 617-492-1031). $49.95.</p>