Re: RARA-AVIS: Noir Sports

From: blumenidiot ( blumenidiot@yahoo.com)
Date: 22 Feb 2008


Kent, I think you contributed years ago when we discussed only baseball. I haven't searched for it, but I do remember smong others I mentioned Richard Rosen whose protagonist, Harvey Blissberg, was a retired pitcher turned detective. I thought the first book in the series, Strike Three, You're Dead, was the best of the series. Myron Bolitar, the protagonist of the Harlan Coben series, is a former basketball star. Mark
 

 
--- "T. Kent Morgan" < tkmorgan@shaw.ca> wrote:

> Despite being a collector of sports fiction, I
> planned to stay out of this
> discussion when I saw the word "noir" combined with
> the word "sports."
> However, it's clear to me that a number of the books
> mentioned in this
> thread don't fall under noir as defined by the many
> experts on this list so
> I am jumping in.
>
> First of all, I agree with the positive comments
> about The Damned UTD by
> David Peace. I believe I commented in the past about
> this novel. Here are a
> few others for your consideration.
>
> The Jook by Gary Phillips involves a former NFL wide
> receiver who in the
> words of the late Barbara Seranella is "trying every
> way he knows to reclaim
> the life of fast women and big money. All this leads
> to the end zone run of
> his life."
>
> The Spoiler by Dominic Stansberry is a novel of
> minor league baseball and
> murder where a sports reporter becomes involved with
> a mysterious woman who
> provides him with a connection between the baseball
> team and a series of
> arsons.
>
> For those looking for rugby novels, Caveman Politics
> by Jay Atkinson is
> about a Florida reporter who plays the game and
> becomes involved in a case
> where a teammate from Trinidad is accused of rape.
>
> My two favorites are The Last Season by Canada's
> most versatile writer Roy
> MacGregor and The Great Molinas by Neil D. Isaacs.
> The first is about hockey
> "goon" Felix Batterinski, who near the end of his
> career is attempting to
> come to terms with his life while serving as a
> player-coach in Poland during
> the early 1980s. The second is the novelized story
> of basketball player Jack
> Molinas whose life was destroyed due to gambling and
> who was eventually
> rubbed out by the mob. A hockey goon and a
> basketball player unable to
> control his impulses IMO qualify under noir sports.
>
> Kent Morgan
>
>
>

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