Jim wrote:
"R.R. Irvine's Moroni Traveler is a former pro football
player, not baseball player. In fact, if memory serves, he
is, like William Campbell Gault's Brock "The Rock" Callahan,
a former LA Ram."
Then Mark wrote:
Oops. So who wrote a series about a baseball player that was
published around the same time? Enger, may?
A couple of hours ago I went into my "baseball" room to check
this out and my paperback copy of Irvine's Gone To Glory fell
off a bookcase and behind a large wardrobe. By the time I
removed all the books, moved the bookcase, recovered the
book, and reshelved all my baseball fiction in a diffrent
way, I forgot that I had gone in there for a reason.
I think the confusion may be because Irvine's character
Moroni Traveler is mentioned as "linebacking for LA" on page
5, but this mystery revolves around a baseball shortstop. The
shortstop, Pepper Dalton, was a boyhood hero of Moroni and
now he is a suspect in the death of his sister who was killed
with a baseball bat.
To answer Mark's question about another series written by
Enger, the two brothers Leif and Lin Enger from Minnesota
wrote a series set in northern Minnesota featuring former
Detroit Tigers slugger Gun Pedersen. The first, Comeback,
earned an Edgar nominee, I believe for best PBO. The next
three also were PBOs and the fifth and final book in the
series was published in hardcover and is difficult to find
even in Minnesota used bookstores.
Leif Enger later wrote the well-received novel, Peace Like A
River, that was published in 2001. He was Winnipeg that year
along with Richard Ford at a signing and Ford received almost
all the attention from a crowd that wasn't very large. I was
one of the few people who bought Enger's book and spoke to
him. He was very surprised that I knew about the baseball
mystery series and had all the PBOs in my collection. He was
the one who told me that the HC was tough to find and I now
wish I had bought the one copy I saw in a Miineapolis store
not long after publication. Someday I will add it too my
collection, but it won't be through an online purchase.
Kent Morgan just north of Minnesota
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