Deadline at Eleven

Summary

In an era where the ink-stained corridors of New York’s fourth estate were deemed the exclusive province of the cynical and the masculine, Helen Stevens—a socialite of considerable pedigree—transgresses the boundaries of her gilded cage to claim a desk at a metropolitan daily. Met with a chorus of derisive sneers from the veteran newsmen, she finds an unlikely, albeit sodden, ally in Jack Rawson, a reporter whose brilliance is frequently eclipsed by the bottom of a bottle. As Stevens carves out a niche as an advice-to-the-lovelorn columnist, her domestic insights unexpectedly intersect with the city's visceral underbelly. When a routine investigation into a missing girl spirals into a labyrinth of homicide, Rawson’s alcoholic stupor leaves him a convenient scapegoat for a crime he stumbled upon in a haze of amnesia. The narrative pivots from newsroom drama to a proto-noir procedural as Stevens utilizes the very correspondence of the broken-hearted to dismantle a conspiracy, exonerate her companion, and facilitate a moral resurrection that culminates in the domestic sanctity of her family home.

Synopsis

When socialite Helen Stevens obtains a job on a New York newspaper, she is met by much derision from the staff. Befriended by a heavy-drinking reporter named Jack Rawson, Helen rises to the position of advice-to-the-lovelorn columnist. One night Helen is assigned to a missing-girl story, and Jack promises to accompany her. However, he gets drunk instead, and later, awakening from a stupor, he stumbles upon the scene of a murder. Slipping into unconsciousness again, Jack awakens the next morning to find himself accused of the killing. Helen, with the aid of one of her lovelorn letters, investigates the story and uncovers the real murderer. Jack reforms and Helen takes him home to meet her mother.