Baseball sensation Bobby Rayburn’s major-league career is booming, and he just signed a multimillion-dollar contract with the Sox. Knife salesman Gil Renard’s job is hanging by a thread and he just sold his most prized possession to stay afloat. All that keeps Gil going, in the face of divorce, destitution, and desperation, is rooting for the Sox–and the team’s new savior, Bobby Rayburn. But when his idol sinks into the worst slump of his career, Gil realizes he alone has the power to restore the slugger’s mojo. At the lowest point he has ever known, Gil finds his mission in life–a mission he will carry out no matter what it takes or who gets hurt.
From the Paperback edition.
From Publishers Weekly
With this taut novel of an overzealous fan's obsession with a baseball player, Abrahams, the author of such compulsively readable thrillers as Lights Out and Pressure Drop, hits one out of the park. From the day Gil Renard's father died outside the ball field where his son was pitching a critical Little League game, Gil has been rabid about baseball. His favorite player is Bobby Rayburn, centerfielder for the Sox (of an unnamed city) who is himself obsessed-with pulling out of a hitting slump. In alternating chapters filled with telling details, Abrahams gradually reveals these men's diverse frustrations, then dramatically brings them together with a violent act of Gil's that relates to his other fixation: a knowledge of fine knives and knifemaking also "inherited" from his father. (It was this knowledge that secured Gil a job with the company that bought his father's business, just as his contempt for their product got him fired.) Abrahams makes Gil's obsessive personality evident from the first chapter, as he "dries up" while talking baseball to a radio talk jock. His eventual slide into madness is frighteningly depicted in this finely crafted, edge-of-the-seat thriller. BOMC alternate; major ad/promo; film rights to Tri-Star. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This dark suspense novel shows the pathological side of fandom. Gil is a rabid fan of baseball's Chicago White Sox who hopes that the team's newly acquired free agent, Bobby Rayburn, will deliver the pennant. Meanwhile, Gil's own life is falling apart. Having lost everything-job, wife, and son-he retains his memories of his own baseball greatness and his obsession with Rayburn as he drifts into robbery and murder. When Gil meets Rayburn and Rayburn shows up Gil's pretensions, a murderous encounter at home plate becomes inevitable. Gil will remind readers of the hero of Robert Coover's Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. (LJ 6/15/68) in the way that baseball fantasy replaces his actual life. This excellent novel by the author of Lights Out (LJ 2/1/94) is highly recommended. [BOMC alternate; previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/94.]-Marylaine Block, St. Ambrose Univ. Lib., Davenport, Ia. --Marylaine Block, St. Ambrose Univ. Lib., Davenport, Ia. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Description:
Baseball sensation Bobby Rayburn’s major-league career is booming, and he just signed a multimillion-dollar contract with the Sox. Knife salesman Gil Renard’s job is hanging by a thread and he just sold his most prized possession to stay afloat. All that keeps Gil going, in the face of divorce, destitution, and desperation, is rooting for the Sox–and the team’s new savior, Bobby Rayburn. But when his idol sinks into the worst slump of his career, Gil realizes he alone has the power to restore the slugger’s mojo. At the lowest point he has ever known, Gil finds his mission in life–a mission he will carry out no matter what it takes or who gets hurt.
From the Paperback edition.
From Publishers Weekly
With this taut novel of an overzealous fan's obsession with a baseball player, Abrahams, the author of such compulsively readable thrillers as Lights Out and Pressure Drop, hits one out of the park. From the day Gil Renard's father died outside the ball field where his son was pitching a critical Little League game, Gil has been rabid about baseball. His favorite player is Bobby Rayburn, centerfielder for the Sox (of an unnamed city) who is himself obsessed-with pulling out of a hitting slump. In alternating chapters filled with telling details, Abrahams gradually reveals these men's diverse frustrations, then dramatically brings them together with a violent act of Gil's that relates to his other fixation: a knowledge of fine knives and knifemaking also "inherited" from his father. (It was this knowledge that secured Gil a job with the company that bought his father's business, just as his contempt for their product got him fired.) Abrahams makes Gil's obsessive personality evident from the first chapter, as he "dries up" while talking baseball to a radio talk jock. His eventual slide into madness is frighteningly depicted in this finely crafted, edge-of-the-seat thriller. BOMC alternate; major ad/promo; film rights to Tri-Star.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This dark suspense novel shows the pathological side of fandom. Gil is a rabid fan of baseball's Chicago White Sox who hopes that the team's newly acquired free agent, Bobby Rayburn, will deliver the pennant. Meanwhile, Gil's own life is falling apart. Having lost everything-job, wife, and son-he retains his memories of his own baseball greatness and his obsession with Rayburn as he drifts into robbery and murder. When Gil meets Rayburn and Rayburn shows up Gil's pretensions, a murderous encounter at home plate becomes inevitable. Gil will remind readers of the hero of Robert Coover's Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. (LJ 6/15/68) in the way that baseball fantasy replaces his actual life. This excellent novel by the author of Lights Out (LJ 2/1/94) is highly recommended. [BOMC alternate; previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/94.]-Marylaine Block, St. Ambrose Univ. Lib., Davenport, Ia.
--Marylaine Block, St. Ambrose Univ. Lib., Davenport, Ia.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.