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Winter Games: A Mystery

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Generally, when sports are described as being a matter of life-and-death, the description is figurative. However, the premise of this book is that someone is making it literal. Reporter Bobby Kelleher moves back to his boyhood home in Shelter Island on Long Island, New York in order to rest up from an ordeal as a political reporter. When he gets there he learns of the sensational high school basketball player Rytis Buzelis that is playing for Shelter Island. Buzelis grew up in Vilnius, Lithuania and only recently blossomed into a first-rate player. He is so good that most of the coaches of top-ranked university basketball programs are scouting him.
One of the coaches is Scott Harrison, a college friend of Kelleher's and they meet at a high school basketball game. There is talk about sleazy activity in the recruitment of Buzelis as well as the actions of some of the dirtier coaches in the NCAA. It quickly moves beyond talk when Scott is shot in the back of the head and killed. Kelleher's goal was to take some time off reporting but the old juices begin flowing again and he starts following the leads.
There are many leads, some of them false yet some that clearly lead somewhere. When Kelleher manages to tape an attempted bribe to get Buzelis to go to a particular school, the thugs come out and threaten him. At first he is able to thwart them, but when they escape, he realizes that he has been lied to. Eventually, he determines the identity of the killers and the reasons for the events.
Although the killers prove to be amateurs, the point is well made. To many, college athletics is an arena of win at all cost and boosters seem more focused on destroying coaches rather than the long-term building of character and pride. Feinstein's understanding of the inside game of NCAA basketball allows him to write a very believable tale about the extremes of recruiting and how cutthroat it can be.