Murderers' Row: Baseball Mysteries (Hardcover)

by Otto Penzler (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

From AudioFile
[Editor's Note: The following is a combined review with MURDERERS' ROW, VOL. 2]--There's no crying in baseball, and some say that too often there's no suspense either. Leave it to the likes of major leaguers Elmore Leonard, Robert B. Parker, Lawrence Block, and others to find dark doings in the diamond's shadows. Was a pitcher who gave new meaning to the word "hurling" an intentional victim of food poisoning? Who slew the only midget to bat in a Major League game? Who delivered a four-bagger comeuppance to a bullying Little League dad? And how did a rattlesnake happen to fan--forever--an athletically hapless kid at the season's climax in a baseball-rabid rural community? A "Double A" list of readers (Lee Horsley, Lorenzo Lamas, Elliott Gould and others) scores nicely in their play-by-play of scams, scandals, extortion, vengeance, greed and, naturally, murder--the usual stuff--in the 14 stories in this two-volume collection. M.B. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 365 pages
• Publisher: New Millennium Entertainment (CA) (June 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1893224252
• ISBN-13: 978-1893224254
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,758,106 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pennant contender., August 22, 2001

By	nobizinfla "nobizinfla" (Windermere, Florida USA) - See all my reviews

I will refrain from using lots of sports cliches to describe this book...but the temptation is there.

This is very good collection of mystery writers and (for reasons I fail to grasp) Mike Lupica. I have read the works of over half the authors and a big fan of some of them.

The book was a pleasant diversion from the normal selection of mysteries and thrillers I read...especially as the major league season winds down.

Most of the stories were quick reads with a couple of surprise endings. Short stories are a different way to enjoy a writer when you are used to the whole novel. It was amazing to see how well some of these novelists could develop characters and plot in such a short format.

I found the stories by Michael Connelly, Laura Lippman, Elmore Leonard, Henry Slesar, Troy Soos and Robert Parker the best. Other than the Lupica the only other one that I found lacking was the one by K.C. Constantine.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Baseball at midnight!, April 26, 2005

By	Jack Maybrick (Shuttling between the streets of Whitechapel and the shadow of Coogan's Bluff) - See all my reviews

Lon Chaney is supposed to have once said that there is nothing funny about a clown at midnight, and anyone who has watched an extremely lengthy extra-inning night baseball game last relentlessly into the following morning knows that the character of the game takes on a different hue than that shown on a lazy summer afternoon or heady early evening.

This book is somewhat misnamed, as not all of the short baseball stories contained herein have an underlying "murder" theme. But all of them - written a few years ago at about the onset of the millennium - do touch upon the dark side of the human psyche.

As with any collection, some stories are better than others. "Ropa Vieja" was written by a woman, and the protagonist is a female detective who notes a number of individuals of questionable immigration status playing baseball on a Baltimore playground and naturally enough concludes that this means that Baltimore is changing for the better. I don't remember anything about the story, beyond that.

And John Lesocroart's "Sacrifice Hit" could have been an effective dark tale about the excessively serious "life or death" attitudes held by some parents and coaches towards their kids performance in Little League ball. But in the end, it merely delivered the insipid message that excessive zealotry is BAD when demonstrated in the cause of victory on the field but GOOD when demonstrated in the causes of "sportsmanship and inclusion". Well, la-de-da!

Most of these stories are pretty good though. Many take place in the past, which is generally a positive thing. Troy Soos's regularly-recurring part-time ballplayer, full-time detective from the turn of the 20th century, Mickey Rawlings, makes a favorable appearance here in "Pick Off Play".

However, in order to engage yourself in this story, you've got to swallow the idea of a pitcher from that era who charges opposing hitters "protection" to have him refrain from nailing them with a bean ball. In a pre-designated-hitter era, in which the pitcher himself had to take his turn at the plate, swift retaliation would have been suffered by any pitcher who tried to fund his retirement account in that way.

Mike Lupica's "The Shot" might seem just a LITTLE dated in a post-Idiot baseball era in which the World Champion Boston Red Sox have finally shed their perennial hard luck image, but it still had me eagerly turning pages. Yet I must confess that I thought it had somewhat of a stupid "shaggy dog" ending that did not justify the build-up. I wonder what YOUR opinion will be on that score. I am debating within myself as to whether I want to buy any of Lupica's baseball novels.

Lawrence Block's detective attempts to solve the 1961 "murder" of the famous Bill Veeck baseball midget, Eddie Gaedel. Brendan Dubois and Henry Slesar master the art of the perfectly executed surprise ending as flawlessly as a Branch Rickey-conceived hit-and-run. Slesar, in particular, left what (in retrospect) seems to be a fairly obvious clue that I didn't pick up on. I wonder whether that's a reflection of the writer's craft or of my own mental slowness, and again, I wonder how other readers responded.

Some will recognize Slesar as a prolific short-story mystery writer from the 1960's, whose works often appear in old Alfred Hitchcock collections. It's nice to see that in 2001, he was still rounding out to mid-season form.

In the year 2005, this is a very readable collection as a whole, assuming that the San Francisco Giants aren't already providing enough horrors for you on the field.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A PERFECT GAME, August 18, 2001

By	Kent Braithwaite (Palm Desert, CA) - See all my reviews

As a mystery writer with my debut novel in initial release, an author of numerous short stories published over the years, and an educator who regularly teaches the writing of short mystery fiction within the California State University system, I believe Otto Penzler did an excellent job assembling original mystery stories for MURDERERS' ROW. This anthology features big name authors such as Lawrence Block, Robert B. Parker, Michael Connelly, and Thomas Perry. The collection covers the subject of baseball from a variety perspectives ranging from Little League to the Majors and from benchwarming little boys and baseball parents to historic superstars and sports agents. Highlights include "Harlem Nocturne" by Robert Parker, a story featuring some fellows named Rickey and Robinson and "Pick-Off Play" by Troy Soos starring his series character baseball journeyman/everyman Mickey Rawlings. I recommend MURDERERS' ROW for any mystery reader interested in baseball (as all good people are).