Murder at Ebbets Field /

August 1914. WWI has just started in Europe, the Miracle Boston Braves are hot on the trail of the first-place New York Giants, and Giants' utility infielder Mickey Rawlings is about to pick up where we last left him in Murder at Fenway Park. When the Giants journey to Brooklyn's brand new Ebbets Field to play their arch rivals, the Dodgers, Rawlings is asked to make a baseball movie with the matinee idol of the day, Florence Hampton. After the filming, he joins the movie company at a party in Coney Island, where, next morning, he finds Hampton's lifeless body under a pier. Rawlings, asked to investigate, learns that Hampton was poisoned with arsenic‘just as her husband had been a few months before. When the Dodger's batboy is poisoned, Rawlings wonders who's next, and why. With the help of a Brooklyn outfielder by the name of Casey Stengel, and with cameos by John McGraw and Christy Mathewson, Soos offers another breezy read full of the flavor of the times. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

A second outing for Mickey Rawlings, the 1914 New York Giants' second-string second baseman (Murder at Fenway Park, 1994, not reviewed)--who's drafted into appearing in movie star Florence Hampton's latest film, only to discover her body washed up at Coney Island the morning after a heartfelt party. Florence, it turns out in the first of several nicely placed surprises, was trying to solve the two-year-old murder of her husband, and her death is only the first of a new round of skullduggery. And even though too little of the action involves the Giants' pennant run, patient readers will be rewarded by a homicide that really does take place, against all odds, at Ebbets Field. Well-judged period background (including a winsome role for Casey Stengel) enlivens a solid mystery.