Detective Fiction, Sports - Fiction, Women Detectives - Fiction, Other Mystery Categories

Prairie Hardball

Name: Prairie Hardball
Author: Alison Gordon
ISBN: 9780771034138

by Alison Gordon

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Overview

It is glorious August in Saskatchewan, and baseball writer Kate Henry is on a road trip home. Accompanied by her partner, homicide detective Andy Munro, she is keen to show him the wide-open spaces of the prairie and the charms of her family home in Indian Head.

In the 1940s, Kate’s mother played for the Racine Belles, in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Now, twenty veterans of the league are gathering for a reunion in the Battlefords, for induction into the Saskatchewan Baseball Hall of Fame.

But all is not peaceful under the prairie sky. Anonymous letters have been received by her mother’s teammates, warning them to stay away from the event. The sinister meaning soon becomes clear. One of the Belles is found murdered.

Kate valiantly tries not to interfere in the police investigation which ensues but, as she talks to former team members, she finds that questions from the past demand answers. It is only when Kate finds herself in mortal danger that she realizes she’s come too close to the truth.

In Prairie Hardball, one of Canada’s craftiest mystery writers combines a nostalgic look at baseball and a vivid evocation of Saskatchewan with a fast-moving, richly textured plot as, once again, Kate Henry’s own instincts and wit play off against conventional police wisdom.

About the Author, Alison Gordon

Alison Gordon, a journalist and broadcaster for twenty years, was the first woman on the American League beat when she covered the Toronto Blue Jays for the Toronto Star. Author of Foul Balls: Five Years in the American League, Gordon published her first Kate Henry mystery, The Dead Pull Hitter, in 1988, followed by Safe at Home, Night Game, Striking Out, and, in 1997, Prairie Hardball. She has been president of PEN Canada and of the Crime Writers of Canada, and the North American vice-president of the International Association of Crime Writers.

Alison Gordon lives in Toronto. She is at work on her next novel.