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bgg616's review against another edition
3.0
The book is Soos' first in a series set in the past, revolving around baseball stadiums. The protagonist is Mickey Rawlings, who is a rookie with the Red Sox, playing at the brand new Fenway Park. His first day, Mick arrives late after a train delay, and stumbles over a dead body. Afraid he is being looked at for the murder, Mick decides to investigate. Although he is a decent ball player, he is a pretty bad detective. Luckily his would-be girlfriend, Peggy and a friend of hers who's a newspaper journalist, are much better investigators.
I learned a good amount of baseball history from this novel. The famous 1912 pitching battle between Joe Wood and Walter Johnson was included in the novel, as was, no surprise, the 1912 World Series which Boston won, defeating the NY Giants. I didn't know Fenway had a hill, later known as Duffy's Cliff, which forced left fielder's to play running uphill. Ty Cobb is a bad guy in the story, no surprise. Soos' description of Boston geography, though not extensive, is accurate. Trolleys were the way to get to Jamaica Plain, and Arnold Arboretum.
This was Soos's debut baseball mystery and a decent novel. I'd read more though this was going to be my favorite being a Red Sox fan, and considering Boston, my hometown. And I am watching the Sox playing in Fenway on tv while writing this.
I learned a good amount of baseball history from this novel. The famous 1912 pitching battle between Joe Wood and Walter Johnson was included in the novel, as was, no surprise, the 1912 World Series which Boston won, defeating the NY Giants. I didn't know Fenway had a hill, later known as Duffy's Cliff, which forced left fielder's to play running uphill. Ty Cobb is a bad guy in the story, no surprise. Soos' description of Boston geography, though not extensive, is accurate. Trolleys were the way to get to Jamaica Plain, and Arnold Arboretum.
This was Soos's debut baseball mystery and a decent novel. I'd read more though this was going to be my favorite being a Red Sox fan, and considering Boston, my hometown. And I am watching the Sox playing in Fenway on tv while writing this.
sheltzer's review against another edition
4.0
Mickey Rawlings is a journeyman baseball player who is picked up by the 1912 Boston Red Sox. On his first day at Fenway Park, he discovers a body and makes it his quest to find out who the victim was and why he was killed.
As a baseball book, this was fantastic! You could feel the reverence for the game and it was full of the characters who played ball in the early days: the gamblers, the crooks, the men who never grew up... As a mystery novel it left something to be desired. At points I felt like conversations were stuck in because the author suddenly remembered that he had to progress with the crime solving. However, the end wrapped up the whodunit nicely.
I will be checking out the next book in the series.
As a baseball book, this was fantastic! You could feel the reverence for the game and it was full of the characters who played ball in the early days: the gamblers, the crooks, the men who never grew up... As a mystery novel it left something to be desired. At points I felt like conversations were stuck in because the author suddenly remembered that he had to progress with the crime solving. However, the end wrapped up the whodunit nicely.
I will be checking out the next book in the series.
kegriese1's review
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
4.25
acreech's review
3.0
2.5 stars, rounded up. This is an old-timey baseball story with a twisted murder mystery plot, poorly unraveled. It made the time pass is about all I can give it.
komet2020's review
5.0
The time is the 1970s. The novel begins with the reminiscences at the Baseball of Fame (HOF) in Cooperstown (NY) of a man in his dotage, who, in his youth, had been a journeyman baseball player in the major leagues. The reason he was there was that he had received an invitation to attend an exhibition game between the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs, 2 teams he had played with earlier in the century. The man, as the last survivor of a generation of pioneer ball players, had been given the honor of throwing out the first ball at the game. His name: Mickey Rawlings.
The reader is then fully immersed in Mickey's salad days in April 1912, after he was hired by the Boston Red Sox as a utility player. Rawlings has just arrived in Boston too late to attend the Saturday game at Fenway Park (then a new stadium that stood out like a great cathedral). But he -- a lad barely out of his teens with a keen love and devotion to the sport -- is determined to report to the Red Sox. The sooner he's a full-fledged member of the team, the more secure he'll feel. (Rawlings' brief stint with the Boston Braves the previous year attested to the precarious position often held by journeyman ball players.) So, after meeting with a stadium attendant at the entrance to Fenway Park, Rawlings wanders into the heart of the stadium, in search of the manager's office. He walks into a tunnel and is halfway inside and ventures past an intersecting corridor when he hears a dull, echoing THUNK from a recessed doorway. There Rawlings discovers to his horror a well-dressed man slumped on the ground whose face had been mutilated. He is sickened by what he sees and passes out. A short time later, he is found and brought before Robert Tyler, the Red Sox treasurer and a local cop who questions Rawlings about his discovery of the dead man.
This dramatic development -- Rawlings' discovery of a dead man -- takes the reader into the heart of the novel which follows Rawlings throughout the 1912 season as he endeavors to find out who murdered the man, whose death the Boston police seemed set on holding him accountable for! There are a lot of twists and turns in this novel that I can't begin to describe, because that would be giving away the heart of the story. But I can say for anyone who takes up "MURDER AT FENWAY PARK" to read that he/she will be treated to a roller-coaster ride full of thrills, chills, and surprises.
The reader is then fully immersed in Mickey's salad days in April 1912, after he was hired by the Boston Red Sox as a utility player. Rawlings has just arrived in Boston too late to attend the Saturday game at Fenway Park (then a new stadium that stood out like a great cathedral). But he -- a lad barely out of his teens with a keen love and devotion to the sport -- is determined to report to the Red Sox. The sooner he's a full-fledged member of the team, the more secure he'll feel. (Rawlings' brief stint with the Boston Braves the previous year attested to the precarious position often held by journeyman ball players.) So, after meeting with a stadium attendant at the entrance to Fenway Park, Rawlings wanders into the heart of the stadium, in search of the manager's office. He walks into a tunnel and is halfway inside and ventures past an intersecting corridor when he hears a dull, echoing THUNK from a recessed doorway. There Rawlings discovers to his horror a well-dressed man slumped on the ground whose face had been mutilated. He is sickened by what he sees and passes out. A short time later, he is found and brought before Robert Tyler, the Red Sox treasurer and a local cop who questions Rawlings about his discovery of the dead man.
This dramatic development -- Rawlings' discovery of a dead man -- takes the reader into the heart of the novel which follows Rawlings throughout the 1912 season as he endeavors to find out who murdered the man, whose death the Boston police seemed set on holding him accountable for! There are a lot of twists and turns in this novel that I can't begin to describe, because that would be giving away the heart of the story. But I can say for anyone who takes up "MURDER AT FENWAY PARK" to read that he/she will be treated to a roller-coaster ride full of thrills, chills, and surprises.
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