Synopsis
The bestselling author of "The Dark Side of the Game" tackles the unspoken taboos in sports today in this fast-paced and gripping thriller set in the world of pro football.
Reviews
Ex-pro-football player Green, author of the nonfiction NFL expos? The Dark Side of Paradise, sets his fifth novel in the high-stakes world of NFL football. The cast of characters in this fast-paced thriller says it all: Angel Cassidy, a Hollywood playgirl out for kicks up until her grisly end; Conrad Dobbins, a shady pro sports agent; African-American Trane Jones, Dobbins's one big client, the key figure in a lucrative campaign for a new athletic shoe; Kurt Lunden, the scheming shoe manufacturer; Clark Cromwell, a born-again NFL journeyman; and a couple of stoned killers who like nothing better than racking up a large body count. When Trane is accused of Angel's murder, Madison McCallAace trial lawyer, athletics agent and familiar from her appearance in previous Green novelsAtakes on his defense, though she disapproves of his brutal treatment of women. Meanwhile, Trane is capitalizing on his notoriety in TV ads ("Zeus Shoes... they're killer") and sales go through the roof. The sudden appearance of a videotape clears Trane, and suspicion falls on his teammate, Clark Cromwell, who once had a relationship with Angel, too. Readers will probably not be surprised that good-hearted (to the point of goofiness) Clark is being framed. But NFL commentator and USA Today columnist Green knows the territory and he leads us briskly right through the bloody, satisfying climax.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Brainy trial lawyer and sports agent Madison McCall (Marauders, 1997, etc.) returns, this time to defend a football player accused in the murder of a Hollywood beauty. Best-known for his nonfictional The Dark Side of the Game (1996), former All-American football star Green, an NPR analyst during the NFL season, has yet to gain respectable yardage as a novelist. Here, foulmouthed, sadistic running back Trane Jones has a chrome ball through his tongue, likes to share opium with prostitutes, beat them before having sex, then beat them some more afterward before another go at it. One morning he wakes up next to a stone- dead hooker, apparently an OD; his agent, Conrad Dobbins, has that whore from Chechnya or somewhere buried in cement at a new building site, along with her pimp and his bitch. Meanwhile, born-again Christian athlete Clark Cromwell gets cut from his team because of a neck injury. Madison handles him and gets a respectable reinstatement of salary. Then glamorous actress Annie Cassidy, who has bedded both Trane and Cromwell, is clubbed to death with Trane's golf club. Although Madison agrees to defend Trane, both ballplayers find themselves wrapped in a haze of guilt. Which of them did it? Or did neither? As ever, Green shines in depicting strategies of the playing field while his stereotypical characters have only enough life to generate a plot of mild entertainment value. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Football pros Clark Cromwell and Trane Jones have nothing in common. Clark's a religious goody-goody, while Trane grew up tough in the inner city and has a criminal record. But when the starlet who seduced them both turns up dead, they must join forces.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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