Settings & Atmosphere - Fiction, Sports - Fiction, Occupations - Fiction, Character Types - Fiction
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Overview
The Women's College Softball Championship tournament ended in two major surprises. One was the victory of the underdog team: a group of upstarts from Burleigh College, a small women's college in New England. The other was the bizarre collapse and death of the losing team's star player. Caused by a violent (and unexplained) allergic reaction, the player's death feels very wrong to CUAA investigator Reggie Lichtman. Add to this Pierce Nolan, a previously unknown coach who brought the winning team from obscurity to the championship in only one year, and Reggie finds herself developing unpleasant suspicions. With the politics of college athletics being what they are and with nothing concrete on which to base her concerns, Reggie's investigation of the circumstances behind the player's death and of the mysterious coach of the winning team must be both quiet and largely unofficial. The further Reggie digs into the past of Pierce Nolan and of the whole Burleigh team, the more disquieting information she uncovers pointing to a conspiracy far more extensive than the simple recruiting violations and ticket-scalping operations with which she usually deals. As Reggie gets closer and closer to the elusive answers, she finds her own life, and those of the people closest to her, in the gravest of dangers....Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
A timely subject--the high, even deadly, competitiveness of women's sports--sharpens the edge of this athletically paced first novel. Regina Lichtmann, chief investigator for the College and University Athletic Association (CUAA), is in the stands when a four-time national champion softball team is unexpectedly defeated by Burleigh College, a lower-division school. One of the stars on the losing team collapses after the game and is taken to a San Diego hospital. Reggie, already curious about the upstart team, which, unlike most of Burleigh's student body, is made up mostly of minority students, is further troubled by the unsympathetic attitude displayed in a TV interview by Burleigh's coach, a diminutive but hard-as-nails woman. Wangling an assignment to write up the coach's success, Reggie's research leads her to an inner-city social worker who may be taking money for linking disadvantaged high-school athletes with colleges eager to improve their sports programs. The students' educations aren't fostered; they are expected only to play hard and stay eligible until they are replaced by other hopeful recruits. In the process of uncovering this scandal, Reggie also solves the nearly perfect murder of the athlete whose death started the search. (June)Library Journal
The collapse and death of a young woman athlete during a softball game sends Regina Lichtmann's intuition into hyperdrive. Investigator for the College and University Athletic Association, she starts a solitary and ultimately dangerous quest to undo the woman's female coach. Basically friendless, Regina does receive some help from distant contacts and from her boss. Well-modulated prose may draw readers in, but the initial flawed motivation and overall lack of tension of this first effort will not hold them for long.Book Details
Published
February 1, 1994
Publisher
St Martins Pr
Pages
256
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780312104498