Combine one smart former quarterback (Boomer Esiason led the Cincinnati Bengals to the Super Bowl, among other gridiron triumphs) and one smart crime writer (Lowell Cauffiel's Marker is an equally impressive performance) and you come up with an exciting, entertaining thriller filled to the brim with succulent slices of football high and low life.
As the team helicopter whizzes them into Manhattan, Derek Brody--the rookie quarterback just signed to a $6 million deal by the New York Stars--reveals his survival technique to his lawyer-agent by drawing a circle on a piece of paper. "'Okay, this is me,' he explained. Around it, he drew six more circles, connecting them all to the one in the middle like the spokes of a wheel. He labeled the others: COACH. TEAM. FANS. MEDIA. FRONT OFFICE. And finally, WIFE/GIRLFRIEND/FRIENDS. 'That's how it's different for a quarterback,' Brody said. 'All these circles can threaten your game. "Don't let the gifts of football take you away from football." That's how my old man used to put it. That's why I don't really give a shit about the Nike deal. Or the news conference. You focus only on winning. Winning will keep all these other circles in line.'"
But winning isn't the only problem with the hapless Stars. They're a tainted team, dirty from top to bottom, plagued with corruption and racial strife that makes them hard to like but easy to believe. Meeting with Eric Smith (a crippled wreck who once was the Stars' last great quarterback hope) minutes before Smith's murder gets Brody involved in a series of plays that will either kill him or help him understand what's going on behind the scenes. Along the way, Esiason and Cauffiel let us share some raunchy inside jokes that--like the dirty laundry they hang out so lavishly--are too good not to be true. --Dick Adler
From Publishers Weekly
Former NFL quarterback Esiason teams up with thriller veteran Cauffiel (Marker, etc.) in this passable but undistinguished novel about high-level corruption in the NFL. When ex-Big Ten star quarterback Derek Brody comes to New York to play his first pro season for the (fictional) New York Stars, the team is talented but torn by internecine feuds, which Brody begins to suspect are spurred and manipulated by shady interests outside the locker room. Soon the suspicions gather heft: after Brody meets Stars' ex-quarterback Eric Smith, Smith is murdered, leaving behind incriminating notes on the team's murky doings, notes that his friend Shay Falan passes along to Brody. Brody and Falan team up (eventually romantically) to expose the Stars' seamy underside. The murder of a prostitute at the Stars' training camp, the machinations of entertainment conglomerate Mecca, the team owners' old debt to Howard Hughes and the surprising (benevolent) involvement of the Mob keep the pot boiling to an explosive (literally) climax. Football fans will enjoy details of training camp, football lingo, some mildly interesting onfield scenes and an Animal House-like gross-out at the Plaza Hotel. The book's success will probably hinge on whether NFL fans buy fiction and on Esiason's own record as a rookie announcer on Monday Night Football. Agent: Russell Galen of Scovil Chichak Galen Literary Agency.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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