Monday, October 6, 2014

Book Review: Mortal Stakes

Title: Mortal Stakes  

Author: Robert B. Parker
Genre: Fiction, Mystery

Ease of Reading: Three hundred twenty-eight pages of twelve point font that kept me wanting to read more.  It was tough to put this one down and read very fast.
Synapse: Spenser, a private investigator, has been hired by the Red Sox' front office to investigate the club's star pitcher who is suspected of throwing the occasional game.  The story takes place during the early 1970s and is more of a suspense thriller than a book about baseball.  I would like to divulge more information about the plot, but I don't want to ruin it for any future readers.  If I take the suspense out of it, then I'm stealing the book's main hook.  And I don't want to rob any potential readers of a fun few hundred pages.
Comments: From what I can tell Robert B. Parker has made a small fortune writing a series about a chiseled bachelor, named Spenser, and his sleuthing. The writing sometimes focuses on the minutiae of the characters' dress or eating habits a bit more than I would care for, Parker makes up for it with well-painted action scenes which I clearly see within my imagination.  ON a side note, I normally can't sit still for a suspenseful movie on my own couch, but for some reason I was much more comfortable reading a book of the same genre.  Go figure.
 Grade: I liked this one. This is two books in a row now that uses baseball as a subplot rather than the main vehicle and I'm okay with that.  Maybe my horizons are broadening a bit?  Any book that I have a difficult time putting down is worthy of an 'A' in my estimation, and Mortal Stakes certainly fits the description.

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