Synopsis
Tin's brother Satchel was a phenomenal baseball talent on the verge of his major league debut when he took his fiancee to meet his brother. He couldn't have known what would happen: that Tin and Wendy would fall in love and break his heart. Faced with such a betrayal, he simply disappears. Despite this rift, Tin and Wendy spend several blissful years together - until one day Wendy is murdered, bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat. Satchel is the prime suspect.
Now Tin is turning thirty, but he's not celebrating - he's doing his best to avoid the ghosts that haunt him incessantly, with the help of his friend Jack Daniels. Tin has lost everyone he ever loved, but almost more than loss and loneliness, it is guilt that is tearing him apart - for he blames himself. Life holds no attraction for him until he meets the beautiful, precocious teenager Moira, who challenges him enough for his interest in living to revive. But then Moira's father is abducted - by Satchel. Tin and Moira follow the kidnapper's instructions, hoping against hope that they can save Moira's father without falling into a trap. Now that Tin finally wants to live again, will he be allowed to?
Reviews
In Turrill's uneven fourth novel, Tinker "Tin" Balune is haunted by the ghosts of his murdered wife, Wendy, and his father, who committed suicide. Tin also mourns the disappearance of his fugitive older brother, Satchel, who remains the primary suspect in Wendy's death by bludgeoning. Tin, 30, retreats to his family's abandoned cabin in northern Michigan, where, filled with despair and Jim Beam, he resolves to drown himself in the lake. Moira, the teenage daughter of his neighbor Sweeney (though she's eternally unclear about her paternal lineage), thwarts his plan and becomes Tin's sustaining force and sex kitten, though her status as savior to such a despondent man is a tough sell for the reader. After a plodding introduction, the unlikely couple discovers a cryptic note from Satchel claiming he kidnapped Sweeney and will kill him if Tin doesn't save him within 24 hours. Tin and Moira race to Chicago to uncover the truth (did Satchel really kill Wendy and kidnap Sweeney? If not, who did?), no easy proposition given the gauntlet of shady characters the duo encounter along the way. The pace picks up once the setting moves to the city, but the tension remains too slack throughout. (Sept.)
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