Customer Reviews

Hunting A Detroit Tiger: A Mickey Rawlings Baseball Mystery (Mickey Rawlings Baseball Mysteries)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is highly entertaining addition to a highly entertaining series.

Mickey Rawlings is nicely drawn as the 25th man on the roster, always struggling to keep his spot on the team, ever mindful that injury to himself or getting on the wrong side team management could mark the end of his baseball career.

The baseball sequences are great. I've always been more of a fan of baseball history than baseball present and really enjoy the details provided.

The storyline's outside the ballpark are equally enjoyable. In this edition we get some insight into the workings of the IWW and Henry Ford's secret police as Mickey works to clear himself of a murder in self defense charge.

This is a really fun read.

I don't often finish a mystery, but this book had me wanting to know what comes next. Mickey Rawlings is a charming character because he is very human, and the story is absorbing because it involves a wide variety of details from 1920 -- labor wars, the Detroit Tigers, vaudeville, etc. A good, entertaining read.

Troy Soos' baseball mysteries are always fun to read. Full of historical baseball references as well as a murder mystery that usually takes place in the opening pages, you can't help being caught up in the adventures of utility infielder Mickey Rawlings. This particular story takes place in 1920 when Mickey finds a slot on the Detroit Tigers, playing along side the temperamental Ty Cobb. Mickey is unjustly accused of murdering a union organizer, merely because of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Pick this one up soon and especially if you're a true baseball fan you will enjoy reading of the events of the time as well as a good time mystery. Highly recommended.

Mickey Rawlings is a mediocre infielder who keeps changing baseball teams, yet stumbles over dead bodies with each new team. Our hero is embroiled in the death of a retired baseball player and union organizer. The police have labelled the death as self defense from Mickey, but Mickey knows he has nothing to do with it. Meanwhile, both the union members (the "wobblies"), Mickey's baseball teammates, the baseball owners, and a scary component of the federal government are all tugging at Mickey in opposite directions over the issue of his support or lack of support for labor unions in general. Mickey is most concerned about clearing his name so some overzealous wobblies don't go after him with a vendetta. Plenty of baseball and romance are sprinkled into the mix. As other reviewers have noted, this book carries a social message too. Enjoy the history and the mystery.

This is a strong mystery that also provides great historical information. Baseball and mystery, what more could you want out of a book?

I normally don't read a series of books out of order, but I discovered this one by accident -- the fourth in a series of books starring Mickey Rawlings, part-time infielder and full-time detective.

I don't anticipate reading any of the three books that preceded it or any that follow. This is a shame, as the book, set in 1920, certainly does provide a taste of old-time baseball. But even this taste isn't completely genuine.

Rawlings finds himself in the middle of a murder mystery that also pits him in between the opposing forces of labor and management in the controversy over the right of the players to organize. In the beginning, Rawlings wants to stay out of the controversy. He just wants to solve the mystery in order to clear his own name so that he can get back to playing baseball.

Most readers, regardless of their own views, would respect Rawlings's neutrality. And they would respect Rawlings's nostalgia for a return to the pre-war (WW1) era, an era which! he perceives, rightly or wrongly, as being less confrontational. And besides, traditional baseball is SUPPOSED to be a mainstay of hoary mossback conservatism.

But this isn't good enough for the book's author, Troy Soos, who ensures not only that Rawlings ultimately solves the murder mystery and reinvents his baseball career but that his political consciousness is raised (at least from a 1920 perspective). Rawlings may never have gotten his first hit of off the great Hall of Fame pitcher, Walter Johnson but he ultimately DOES take appropriately progressive viewpoints on issues such as child labor, unions, and women's suffrage.

And who is this emancipated chick that becomes Rawlings's love interest in the novel? I assume that the earlier novels in the series explain the sudden entrance of this female protagonist who votes, smokes cigarettes, wears bloomers, wrestles with bears, wields crowbars, and sentences Rawlings to a lifetime of garbage towing. The less said about ! her, the better.

Some historical points --- the great slu! gging Tiger outfielder Harry Heilmann finished his career with 112 stolen bases. Soos's portrayal of him as a man who could belt a ball 400 feet and be held to a single seems inappropriate.

And I'm open to correction, but it seems to me that John Montgomery Ward, an early advocate of the right of baseball players to organize, despite his vilification of the infamous "reserve clause", that bound a player to the team with whom he originally contracted, acknowledged it as a necessary evil. I believe that his ultimate response to its abuses was to organize a rival league, rather than to fight for the repeal of the reserve clause within the National League. It seems unlikely that he would have urged its repeal in 1920, as he does in this book during a conversation with Rawlings.

2 stars go to this book for some good old-time baseball action -- 0 stars are added for the murder mystery and the gratutitous political conscousness-raising.