A Dead Night on the Beat contains sixteen literary short stories with city and rural backgrounds that alternate from adult to adolescent viewpoints. A major theme of many of the "adolescent" stories is coming of age by frustrated youth. The lead story concerns a used-up veteran newspaper reporter who seeks redemption in an incident of an accident affecting a child and the final one, "Last of the Valiant," is an apocalyptic view of a world beset by atomic ruin brought on by repeated attacks by terrorists.