MURDERERS' ROW Volume 1

[Editor's Note: The following is a combined review with MURDERERS' ROW, VOL. 2]--There's no crying in baseball, and some say that too often there's no suspense either. Leave it to the likes of major leaguers Elmore Leonard, Robert B. Parker, Lawrence Block, and others to find dark doings in the diamond's shadows. Was a pitcher who gave new meaning to the word "hurling" an intentional victim of food poisoning? Who slew the only midget to bat in a Major League game? Who delivered a four-bagger comeuppance to a bullying Little League dad? And how did a rattlesnake happen to fan--forever--an athletically hapless kid at the season's climax in a baseball-rabid rural community? A "Double A" list of readers (Lee Horsley, Lorenzo Lamas, Elliott Gould and others) scores nicely in their play-by-play of scams, scandals, extortion, vengeance, greed and, naturally, murder--the usual stuff--in the 14 stories in this two-volume collection. M.B. (c) AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine [Published: DEC/ JAN 02]