Night Game

March 1, 1993
As in Gordon's previous two mysteries featuring Kate Henry ( The Dead Pull Hitter ; Safe at Home ), the Toronto baseball writer stumbles onto a murder that involves the local Titans, the team she covers. This time, however, the setting is Florida, where the Titans are suffering through spring training under a martinet of a new manager. When a young woman sportswriter is shot to death, word is that her active sex life involved half the players in the major leagues, as well as most of the men in her Florida hometown. As a result, there are plenty of suspects. Gordon is developing a pleasing, if derivative, voice, with a blend of wisecracking and subdued sentimentality that is easy to take. Her amateur sleuth is a suitable mix of smart-aleck and self-deprecating nice gal, and the baseball milieu is deftly realized (Gordon covered the Toronto Blue Jays for several years). The detection in this one is moderately clever, with a key clue that probably only a woman PI would pick up and a satisfying choice of villains. However, it remains to be seen how many more murders can occur at the periphery of major-league baseball teams without straining credulity.