GoodReads meta-data is 304 pages, rated 3.79 by 309 litizens.
Genre: krimi
Verdict: George Will would approve.
It is July 1917 and since April the United States has thrown itself into the War to End all Wars. Ten thousand men — doughboys — a day were entering the Western Front. By November 1918 more than four million American men were under arms. Behind them was an unprecedented mobilisation in industry, agriculture, railroads, and shipping. Women joined the work force and blacks moved north to work in war industries. The great Muscle Shoals development began (and it later morphed into the Tennessee Valley Authority). And there was more.
Part of the more was a patriotic anti-Germanism that made it dangerous to be called Schmidt, Eisenhower, Kresbach, Diffenbaker, or anything else that some fool might think was German. Lutheran churches were burned by self-appointed patriots and police had blind eyes. Cities like Baltimore that had more Germans than anything else were patrolled by the army. Even H. L. Mecken had to adopt a low(er) profile. Newspapers were censored. Labour leaders who criticised exploitative armaments manufacturers were imprisoned without trial. Hysteria was in the air along with kerosene. Kayser rolls were off the menu.
Our hero, Chicago Cubs second baseman, Mickey Rawlings lives on double plays, drag bunts, run and hits, choke-ups, tag-ups, inside slides, pick-offs, stolen bases, balks, sac flies, inside the park homers, and barely notices any of this until…….! Then his infield teammate and double play partner, shortstop, Ed Kaiser is murdered. For a time it seems he was killed because of that name, and that seemed plausible in the time and place, but no, there was more to it.
The more emerges as Mickey, reluctantly, becomes involved in the labyrinth of wartime Chicago between home games and road trips. It starts when he delivers condolences to Kaiser’s family and begins to realise how pervasive and pernicious the anti-German feeling is. One thing leads to another and he is warned off, which, per the conventions of the genre, stimulates his competitive desire to find out more.
Profiteers, opportunists, corrupt officials, naive churchmen, jaded journalists, vigilantes, plank thick coppers, all put in an appearance. Though Charles Wrigley’s name is much mentioned, he never appears on the page.
Physics teacher Soos.
This entry is the third in a series of kimis set in the world of baseball. There are a couple of these series and I have been curious but reluctant to try them I did sample another one a long time ago that started in Fenway Park and lapsed almost immediately in cliché so that I did not get past chapter two. This one has more life in it, and just enough baseball to offer background. Mickey mixes with many historic figures of the era like Shoeless Joe Jackson, who forgot his spikes once and never lived it down, Burleigh Grimes, Fred Merkle, and their ilk.
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