Customer Reviews

Murder At Wrigley Field (Mickey Rawlings Baseball Mysteries)

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This is the third in the Mickey Rawlings series ("Murder at Fenway Park" and "Murder at Ebbetts Field" precede it). Rawlings, a utility infielder who gets traded more often than baseball cards, again finds himself nearby when a murder is committed. This time it is a fellow Cubs teammate, Willy Kaiser. Willy is Rawlings' friend and he vows to track down the killer. Could it be: 1. A player Willy displaced at shortstop, out to get revenge? 2. Another baseball club owner out to destroy the Cubs? 3. Any one of the many citizens whipped into a frenzy by the anti-war propoganda being spread around the US? The plot gets pretty thick as Mickey teams up with his old newspaper buddy, Landfors, to try to sort out fact from fiction. There are many colorful characters we meet on the way including ballplayers, owners, factory workers, German immigrants, businessmen, and members of an anti-war organization. Mickey is in only slightly less danger than in the earlier books. The real danger seems to be that he'll be cut from the team and forced to travel to Europe to fight for his country. Although I'm not a scholar of the period (1918), the descriptions seem to be accurate enough and some of the characters are not fictional (though their actions are) in order to end more realism to the work.

In 1918 Mickey Rawlings, no longer a rookie, plays for the Chicago Cubs in the midst of America's anti-German hysteria during the hot days of World War I. His buddy, rookie Willie Kaiser, tormented by fans and teammates, becomes moody and morose and Mickey worries about him. Meanwhile someone begins a campaign of harassment against the team. He releases smoke bombs, saws bleacher seats so they collapse, and puts pretzels at all concessions stands so the team is vilified in the press for being pro-German. To cap it all off, someone reduces Mickey to cold showers by stealing his hot water heater.

When Charles Weeghmann, builder of the field and President of the Cubs, suspects William Wrigley is the saboteur because he wants to take over the tea, he asks Mickey to investigate. Then, in the midst of the on-field 4th of July celebration, Willie Kaiser dies of a gunshot wound.

If Soos intends to portray the tenor of the times as well as to present a Q story as intriguing as Bobby Thompson's home run, and a character as irresistible as a beer and hot dog (and I'm sure he does),I'd say he's batting at least .450.

The appealing and resourceful Mickey probes at the very source of America's neuroses at a time when the music of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven is banned, the director of the Boston Symphony jailed for playing German music, German-Americans are being lynched, and even innocent Dachshunds and German shepherds neglected or killed. But the world will right itself again, and even professional baseball survives the turmoil.

Soos's characters are fully developed and intriguing. His portrait of an earlier America in the throes of war hysteria says a lot to us today. We can take the warning to heart. There are no lectures here, though, just a rousing good tale.

This is a fascinating book because it combines the drama of a murder mystery, sabotage, and baseball against a backdrop of American fear of German culture during World War I. I found the social commentary fascinating, and wondered about the accuracy of the times. Our hero (Mickey Rawlings) is trying to solve the murder of a teammate with the misfortune of having a German name. He gets involved in a anti-German society that sounds like the Ku Klux Klan, rubbing elbows with some scary hatemongers. He also gets involved with some suspicious baseball team owners. When other bodies start to fall, the mystery deepens. Throughout it all, Mickey is struggling with his patriotic duty versus his love for the game of baseball.

I loved this book.

Mr. Soos does a very good job with the plot by not trying to cram too much into the book. Youc an follow the plot lines yet still be surprised at how it turns out. A little light on the baseball part but it doesn't hurt the book at all.