Forced Out: A Novel (Hardcover)

~ Stephen Frey (Author)
Key Phrases: Forced Out, Stephen Frey, Mikey Clemant (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Known for his financial thrillers, Frey (The Takeover) mixes baseball and crime in his less than compelling 15th novel. Arthritic, 63-year-old Jack Barrett, who lives with his grown daughter in Sarasota, Fla., where he bags groceries at a convenience store, wonders how he got sacked from his job as a respected scout for the New York Yankees and robbed of his pension. While watching a local minor league baseball game, Jack sees a player who just might be his ticket back to The Show: Mikey Clemants, a gifted centerfielder who displays his talents intermittently and doesn't seek or earn the approval of the fans or his teammates. Add to the mix Johnny Deuce Bondano, a Queens hit man hired to murder the guy who killed a Mafioso's grandson. Readers will enjoy unraveling the mysterious backstories of Barrett and Clemants, but a plethora of subplots and minor characters slow the main action. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Description

THREE MEN, THREE SECRETS, ONE CHANCE AT REDEMPTION. Sarasota, Florida: Jack Barrett is down on his luck. Forced to retire from his job as a scout for the New York Yankees under a cloud of scandal, he's just barely getting by in a small Florida town when his daughter drags him to watch the local team play a home game. And that's when everything changes. On the field he spots a remarkable player, Mikey Clemant, a kid whose amazing natural skill on the field is counter-balanced by a terrible attitude and inconsistent play. In Clemant, Jack thinks he might have found his ticket back to the big time. But Clemant has no interest in Jack's big plan -- he insists he just wants to live out his days playing Single A ball, living the life of a loner on a team that's going nowhere. Jack won't be so easily deterred. Queens, New York: Johnny Bondano is the premier hitman for the Luchessi crime family. Ruthless but with a strict moral code, he is given instructions to find and kill the man who allegedly was behind the wheel during a hit-and-run accident that took the life of the grandson of a family underboss.He suspects the family isn't telling him everything that happened the night the little boy was killed, but to question his orders is tantamount to suicide. As Jack, Mikey, and Johnny's destinies converge, loyalties will be tested and dreams will collide, with violent and unpredictable results. And on the green field of a small town baseball diamond, one man will have a last chance to find redemption.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Atria; 1st Atria Books Hardcover Ed edition (August 5, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416549633
• ISBN-13: 978-1416549635
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (192 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #493,191 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars No Home Run, But Certainly Not A Strike Out, October 8, 2008

By	K. Harris "Film aficionado" (Las Vegas, NV) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I know a lot of readers will approach "Forced Out" as a fan of Stephen Frey's more business and/or financial related thrillers. While I understand this represents a change of pace, I have not been a follower of Frey's previous work. Others will undoubtedly be drawn to the novel due to its baseball content--right down to the metaphorical title. I am, also, no great lover of baseball. So while others may have approached this novel with built-in expectations--I was a relatively blank slate. I was looking for a reasonably entertaining thriller, and that's what "Forced Out" is.

The book tells the story of two men on different paths. There's Jack Barrett, a former baseball scout fallen on hard times. Reaching his golden years, Jack struggles with a past that has betrayed him while simultaneously looking to discover something redemptive--something that would provide a better life for he and his devoted daughter. Then there's Johnny Bondano, a mob hitman set on a mission that is counterintuitive to the moral code that keeps him sane. Both men are drawn to a minor league baseball player (who may or not be a phenom) for different reasons--and this sets up a major collision.

The characters of "Forced Out," both major and minor, aren't particularly likable or relatable--but nevertheless, I was fascinated by their character flaws. The story kept me interested and it is a pretty fast read. I was positive I was on track to a "4 Star" review as I followed the entertaining plot to its inevitable confrontation. The problem, then? The build-up of the whole novel comes to a stunningly quick resolution that lacks the tension I was expecting. And missing this major play in the final inning (I'm no good at sports metaphors), the book sort of fizzles. And after a somewhat unsatisfactory climax, the wrap-up is cursory, bizarre and unbelievable at best. I really liked 90 percent of this book, but the last thirty pages were a major let down. I've stuck with less interesting reads, but it's really disappointing to read something enjoyable that so completely derails in the end. KGHarris, 10/08.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Far more than just its story -- and the story's good, September 16, 2008

By	Peter G. Keen "rabidreader" (virginia usa) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

On the surface, this begins as a fairly standard thriller/mystery but it is resonant at many levels. It's a story of pairs of people caught in horrible traps of their own past and in their relationships with each other, with no perceivable way out -- Jack, the central figure -- elderly father who was once in the center of big league baseball and is now broke, drunk and resentful -- and his on-the-shelf daughter, Cheryl, and their conflicted efforts to escape from bad past, bleak present and hopeless future; Cheryl's own search for a decent man (she gets Bobby intead), the tormented expert assassin and his vicious boss; his lament for his dead wife, Karen, and a determination somehow to avoid betrayal of what little self-regard he still has; the young fatherless, angry and bright young man that Jack recruits to help him get close to the core figure in the mystery, a brilliant minor-league baseball player with All-Star talent but determined to distqance jimself from everyone, a low-level loan shark and his own wife Karen.... These dyads of despair weave together and, while the resolution is perhaps a tiny contrived, they come to life and catch the reader's empathy. The story line is well-handled, a straight-forward basic plot, where you can guess at some of the main denouements but there are twists everywhere, all convincing. The characters are cleverfully revealed through the story, with no wasted psychologizing or sidetracks; Cheryl, in particular comes alive in her sad dilemmas. The book could be a downer; at stages, the threats the good guys face seem deadly in their traps, and indeed there are bleak elements throughout the story. (My review does not inlcude some of the other key characters -- this is, after all, a mystery and you want it kept that way before you read it.)
I did not have high expectations of "Forced Out" and the first 30 or so pages of set up were just OK, not special. But as the story unfolded, I found it more and more both enjoyable and memorable.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A pretty good book... until it goes completely off the rails!, September 5, 2008

By	Brian Baker (Santa Clarita, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I was a little leery of reading this book as I'm not a sports fan and typically find the topic boring as reading subject matter. I was very pleasantly surprised to find myself becoming quite involved and engaged with the characters, and the Mafia aspect of the story as it came into play.

It moved briskly along as we followed the story of a Grumpy Old Man and his spinster daughter trying to get their lives together, and their chance intersection with a promising young baseball player in the farm leagues in Florida. Meanwhile, in New York, a Mafia hit man is ordered by his capo to find and kill the man who killed the capo's grandson in a traffic accident while trying to escape the clutches of a loan shark. The hit man comes to realize the assignment violates his own set of moral values, and that as marginal as those are, they're the only things that distinguish him from the other animals in his milieu. He's faced with his own moral crisis, and in trying to resolve it realizes his own life is in need of redemption.

Interesting stuff! I'm thinking 4 - 5 stars.

Then last night I hit the last 60 or so pages of this book, and it turned into a train wreck.

Characters started acting completely OUT of character. The hit man killed someone he'd previously saved, and the way it was portrayed in the book was incredibly incompetent technically. One of the important but peripheral characters completely and inexplicably disappeared entirely from the story. MANY rookie errors along those lines.

So now, unfortunately, it's only a 2-star effort.

At best.