Mystery & Crime, Fiction Subjects

The Dead Pull Hitter : A Kate Henry Mystery

Name: The Dead Pull Hitter : A Kate Henry Mystery
Author: Alison Gordon
ISBN: 9780771034206

by Alison Gordon

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Overview

I’m Katherine Henry. My friends call me Kate. I am a baseball writer by trade. I’m forty, older than most of the Titans, including the manager. I’m tallish, prettyish, and a lot more interesting than most of the people I write about.

I’m good at my job, to the active disappointment of some of my male colleagues, who have been waiting for me to fall on my face since the day I walked into my first spring training.

I am also the only woman on the team plane who doesn’t serve drinks.

Kate has her problems with the arrogance, ignorance, easy money and bigotry of the sports world. She also has impossible deadlines and puts in weeks of overtime. But it’s all in a baseball-season’s work.

Until the day the designated hitter doesn’t show for the game: someone seems to have used his skull for batting practice.

The homicide squad is called in, and Kate’s search for a scoop puts her at odds, and in pleasantly close contact, with the law. As real life impinges on the world of baseball, Kate learns how naïve – and vulnerable – she really is.

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.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Whodunit aficionados and baseball fans alike will enjoy this thoroughly engaging novel that provides a colorful inside view of the all-American pastime. The characters are authentic, the plot deftly paced and the narrative lively and humorous. Kate Henry, a 40-year-old baseball writer, covers the Toronto Titans for the Toronto Planet. The veteran reporter is intelligent, feisty and enamored of her job. The Titans are about to clinch the pennant, but designated hitter Sultan Sanchez misses the big game. During the victory celebration the team announces that Sultan is dead. The next morning, the body of ace pitcher Steve Thorson is found in the clubhouse, and it appears that the two murders are related. Even worse, the killer must be someone connected with the team. In pursuit of this hot story, Kate confronts blackmail, drugs and, eventually, the culprit. Gordon's feminine viewpoint injects new life into the sports mystery. The author, who spent five years covering the Blue Jays for the Toronto Star , was the first woman to cover the American League beat and wrote the nonfiction Foul Balls . She deserves to make the All-Star team. (Aug.)