Hunting a Detroit Tiger /

It's 1920, WWI is over and the world is getting back to "normalcy." Mickey Rawlings, the journeyman utility infielder last seen in Murder at Wrigley Field, has been dealt from the Chicago Cubs to the Detroit Tigers. After breaking his arm in spring training, he ends up at a Wobblies meeting where he finds the fatally shot body of Emmett Siever, an ex-major leaguer who had been trying to organize a players union. The next day, the newspapers credit Rawlings with the killing, described as self-defense. Pretty soon, the Wobblies are out to get him; Hub Donner, union-buster, is buying him lunch; and his own teammates, including the surly Ty Cobb, aren't too crazy about his return to the lineup. Then Rawlings can't find the Detroit cop who told the papers he was the killer; pretty soon there is another Wobblie death. Getting caught up in Attorney General Mitchell Palmer's red scare, Rawlings and his old journalist friend Karl Landfors‘who lands in jail‘pursue leads that end with Rawlings loading his old army Colt .45 for action. Though taut with plot twists, this fourth Rawlings mystery doesn't pack the wallop of Soos's earlier novels, which kept a tighter focus on baseball lore and mores. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

The Detroit papers all say that journeyman infielder Mickey Rawlings shot union organizer Emmett Siever in self-defense during a rally in Fraternity Hall. But although Mickey was on the scene, he doesn't know anything about the shooting--except that he didn't do it, and that the revolver found in Siever's hand was a plant. But ``personnel coordinator'' Hub Donner, brought in by the American League to bust the struggling players' union, decides that the notoriety has made Mickey's signature just the one he needs over a series of articles condemning the union, and he puts major-league screws on him when Mickey won't play ball- -floating rumors about Mickey's anti-union sympathies that have his new teammates on the Tigers freezing him out, and the Wobblies who organized the rally threatening revenge unless he delivers them a better candidate for Siever's killing. Mickey's left with just three questions: How will he survive the 1920 season with the front office and his teammates both at his throat? Why isn't Siever's daughter Constance more distraught at her father's death? And will the Tigers, led by that inimitable sourpuss Ty Cobb, ever climb out of last place? Mickey's fourth outing (Murder at Wrigley Field, 1996, etc.) may be his best nine innings. The union-busting makes the mystery as timely as Donald Fehr, even though all the games are played on real grass.