Best Bet in Beantown

Rating:
Summary: Best Bet in Baseball Mysteries
Review: In the rough-and-tumble millieu of 19th Century pro baseball, Will Beaman makes for a rich protagonist. Brash, cynical, ultimately human, he's one of a parade of well-defined characters in G.S. Rowe's new mystery novel from Virginia's Pocol Press. You can't help but love this guy! Against the backdrop of America's game at the turn of the century, Beaman battles the seamy side of Boston's scam syndicates while masquerading as the Boston Beaneaters' flak. I have to admit I loved this book. The best elements of an historical baseball novel combined with the thrills and chills of a great mystery. And peppered with wondrous, classic ball-park hecklings such as, "Ya field like a kitten playing with grandma's yarn," and "You'd muff an apple dumpling if you'se was starving." Congratulations to Rowe for a book I couldn't put down.

Rating:
Summary: A Real Page Turner
Review: Set in the late 1800's, this who-dun-it evolves around the Boston Beaneaters Baseball Team. Using real people and events this book of fiction is recommended not only for mystery lovers, but for baseball fans.

Rating:
Summary: Bombed in Beantown
Review: The other reviewers must not've read the same book I did. I love baseball and mysteries both but this fails on both scores. The story is almost juvenile--anybody who's read even one Nancy Drew will know right away who the villians are. And the baseball stuff is extremely weak. The author I think is claiming the players and games really happened, but I know for a fact the games at least didn't. It's so easy to check and see he made them all up. Then too he's supposed to be a historian as his profession. What historian would have characters in the 1890s using expressions like being "up front" and "its a wash" meaning a tie. This is more like the 1990s. I would say for all these reasons its fair to say this book really bombed.