Murder at Wrigley Field (Mickey Rawlings Series #3)

by Troy Soos

Overview

THE DEADLY CONFINES

While the nation wages war against Germany in 1918, utility infielder Mickey Rawlings has been traded to the North Side of Chicago. He's batting a career high (a respectable .274) and the Cubs are in first place. For the first time in a long while Mickey is feeling financially secure enough to buy furniture. That's when his best friend--rookie Willie Kaiser--is shot dead right on the diamond. While the official explanation is "accidental death from a stray bullet," Mickey thinks someone's taken the anti-war sentiment too far. Between collapsing bleacher seats and pretzel sabotage in the stands, Mickey's search for answers takes him from silent movies to speakeasies to the stockyards. As long as he keeps fouling off clues, it's only a matter of time before a killer is caught in a rundown--or Mickey is tagged out permanently.

Praise for the Mickey Rawlings Baseball Mysteries

"Full of life." --The New York Times Book Reviewon Hanging Curve

"A perfect book for the rain delay. . .a winner!" --USA Today on Murder at Fenway Park

"Delightful. . .mixing suspense, period detail that will leave readers eager for subsequent innings." --Publishers Weekly on Murder at Fenway Park

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780758287410
Publisher:	Kensington
Publication date:	04/30/2013
Series:	Mickey Rawlings Series , #3
Pages:	306
Sales rank:	141,680
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Troy Soos is a critically acclaimed author, teacher, and former research physicist. He is best known for his Mickey Rawlings series of baseball mysteries. His novels have been reviewed in the New York Times, Boston Globe, and USA Today. Soos is a member of the Mystery Writers of America and the Society for American Baseball Research. He currently lives in Lake Howell, Florida (near Winter Park, Florida).

Editorial Reviews

In the summer of 1918, wartime fever grips Chicago, rendering even pretzels and dachshunds verboten. Mickey Rawlings, journeyman second baseman and hero of Soos's last two mysteries (Murder at Fenway Park and Murder at Ebbets Fields) has a new shortstop to work with, Willie Kaiser. With a name like Kaiser, Willie is not the most popular guy in Chicago. On July 4th, while marching in a patriotic parade at Cubs Park (it would not be named Wrigley Field until 1926), Kaiser is fatally shot. Rawlings is determined to find out who did it. Among his suspects are the shortstop who lost his job to Willie; the Patriotic Knights of Liberty, an anti-German vigilante group; and Bennett Harrington, a part owner of the Cubs who would like to be the boss. Learning that Kaiser had worked in Harrington's war plant, Rawlings takes a job there to snoop. His life is endangered by an explosion set up by the plant's security chief, who belongs to the Patriotic Knights. When the security chief's body is found in the Chicago River, Rawlings wonders if he's the next target. Along with a first rate wartime Chicago atmosphere, Soos gives us cameo appearances by such baseball legends as Shoeless Joe Jackson and Bonehead Fred Merkle. Although this tale is slower paced than earlier stories, Rawlings still turns double plays and solves murders with equal grace. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This even-tempered Chicago mystery takes place in 1918, when army enlistments depleted the ranks of the Cubs. With someone capitalizing on anti-German sentiments by sabotaging several Cubs games, part-owner Charles Weeghman asks second baseman Mickey Rawlings to find the guilty party. After his best friend, Willie Kaiser, is murdered in the crowded Cubs ballpark, Rawlings sets out to find the killer. Low-key antics, attention to period detail, and subtle plot interweavings underscore this solid, simple work.

Library Journal

Summer, 1918. Anti-German fever runs high, even on the baseball diamond, where Mickey Rawlings is toiling as the Chicago Cubs' second baseman, part of a sweet double-play combination that's broken up when rookie shortstop Willie Kaiser, whose name never gets into the papers no matter how slick his glove, is shot in the middle of a Fourth of July maneuver on the field. An accidentally discharged weapon? A moment of kraut-killing madness? Willie's kid sister Edna Chapman, who's too nice to have much to say for herself, doesn't think so, and neither does Mickey. Moonlighting his way into Willie's old job at Bennett Harrington's Dearborn Fuel Company, and cozying up to Dearborn security guard Curly Neeman's buddies in the Patriotic Knights of Liberty, Mickey convinces himself that Willie's shooting is linked to a fierce struggle for power in the major leagues, and maybe even to a treasonable secret somebody would kill to protect. But how can Mickey—who can't even find his own missing hot-water heater—make a case when everybody he can tie in to Willie's murder ends up dead?

Compensating for the subpar mystery, Mickey's third (Murder at Ebbets Field, 1995, etc.) is Soos's quietly effective portrait of wartime Chicago in the throes of painful German-baiting and on the verge of Prohibition.

Kirkus Reviews