Squeezeplay - Hardcover

Nighbert, David F.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312078471 ISBN 13: 9780312078478

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1992

Synopsis

Certain that the corpses of "Holy Joe" Ahern, the veteran Astros pitcher, and a prostitute--found together in a Houston hotel room--were not the result of accidental deaths, Bull Cochran begins an investigation

About this title

Reviews

For his fourth novel, Nighbert returns--albeit briefly--to the baseball setting of his 1989 effort, Strikezone. The protagonist once again is player-turned-novelist Bill "Bull" Cochran. This time, the hardheaded Cochran is involved in the investigation of the apparent murder-suicide of a famous pitcher and a classy prostitute in a motel in one of the seedier parts of Houston. That the pitcher, Joe Ahern, was a former roommate of Cochran's, "the only pitcher who can ever compare to Nolan Ryan," and a genuinely good guy with a sterling reputation only strengthens Cochran's resolve to uncover the truth. The mess that he encounters includes arson, real estate swindles, money laundering, crooked computer wizards and the theft of $5 million from a right-wing evangelist. Along the way, Cochran gets beaten up several times, shot, tossed into an automobile compactor and generally abused. Nighbert keeps all this in play fairly adroitly until a climax that involves several gratuitous plot twists and an unbelievable from-the-jaws-of-death finale. Until those last few pages, the book moves at a lightning clip, its extremely convoluted plot kept plausible by the standards of the hard-boiled genre. And while the ending doesn't quite work, it's certainly not dull.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A second outing for Bull Cochran (Strikezone)--pitcher-turned- writer-turned-amateur p.i.--gets him involved in the case of pitching ace ``Holy Joe'' Ahern, who, the cops say, killed Cordelia Mae Oliver, a prostitute, then turned the gun on himself. Bull doesn't believe it and agrees to investigate for Ahern's widow, Peg--quickly discovering that the day Ahern died, there was an explosion at his business partner Jerry Lamp's design office and a robbery of five million dollars earmarked for the El Salvadoran Relief Fund from Jerry's dad's ministries. Puckett, from Houston Homicide, is especially interested in Bull's findings, as is Bubba, a behemoth thug; so to protect Bull, his girlfriend Molly, a cop, arranges for some backup for him. But the backup and Bull are almost killed in a car compactor, and bodies will fly every which way before Bull can vindicate his late friend. Fierce, fast-paced, and slickly told. The plotting's less original than Strikezone's, but there's still plenty here for fans of the hard-boiled. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312078471
• ISBN 13: 9780312078478
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 263