From childhood on, I’ve been obsessed with sports. As a kid, I devoured the novels of the great sportswriter, John R. Tunis, and my seventh-grade short story was called “Woman in the Dugout.”
My latest novel, Death in the End Zone, centers on the investigation of the murders of two star football players whose bodies are discovered in the end zone of their high school’s football field in a compromising position. In the course of her investigation, homicide detective Caitlin O’Connor comes face to face with rampant homophobia within the football subculture, as well as the sexual abuse suffered by one of the victims by a supposedly “trusted adult.”
For those of you who love mysteries that involve sports, here are five diverse titles to check out.
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Harlan Coben, Drop Shot
In the second novel in Coben’s long-running series featuring sports agent Myron Bolitar, Myron feels terrible that he didn’t get around to returning calls from his former tennis-playing client, Valerie Simpson. Now it’s too late because she was shot to death in the Food Court at the U.S. Open. He investigates the murder and discovers a disturbing connection between Valerie and one of his current clients, the up-and-coming tennis star Duane Richwood. Digging further into Valerie’s background, he discovers her boyfriend was murdered six years earlier, and the two homicides may be related.
In addition to the entertaining twists and turns of Myron’s investigation, the novel (and the entire series) features a colorful cast of secondary characters, including Myron’s eccentric best friend Win and his pistol of an assistant, Esperanza.
Peter Corris, The Black Prince
Known as “the godfather of Australian crime fiction,” Corris’s long-running mystery series features Cliff Hardy, an ex-boxer turned private detective. In The Black Prince, the proprietor at his gym hires him to find his missing son Clinton, an outstanding basketball and Australian football player whose nickname is “the black prince.” Clinton has dropped out of sight, apparently determined to track down the dealer who sold his girlfriend the steroids that led to her death.
Hardy’s investigation takes him into the sordid worlds of illegal boxing and steroid dealing, and he nearly loses his life trying to save Clinton’s.
I was fascinated not only with the mystery but with the peek into the Australian countryside beautifully evoked by Corris, as well as the window into the racial divides that plague Australian society.
Andrew Welsh-Huggins, Fourth Down and Out
In the first novel of his mystery series featuring Andy Hayes, a disgraced and despised former college star quarterback turned private eye, Hayes investigates what starts out as a seemingly simple case. A client hires him to retrieve a laptop in order to delete a video of him making out with one of his teenage daughter’s friends. Set up in an extortion scheme by the girl and her boyfriend, the client desperately wants the laptop back.
But it seems that others are also determined to gain possession of the computer. They include the father of one of the would-be extortionists whose incriminating business files stored on the laptop are of interest to the FBI. The case brings Hayes back into contact with Bobby Fletcher, a huge Ohio State football booster, who’s also after the laptop for different reasons. In a dramatic scene at the stadium on the big game day between OSU and Michigan, Hayes finally confronts Fletcher for contributing to his youthful downfall.
Welsh-Huggins evokes the football mania of Columbus, his home city, and the price a young star player pays for making a poor moral choice. You can’t help but root for Hayes as he doggedly solves a complicated case while dealing with the continued wrath of diehard football fans with long memories.
Donna Andrews, Die Like an Eagle
For cozy mystery sports-loving fans, Donna Andrews’ Die Like an Eagle is a delight. When the intrepid amateur sleuth Meg Langslow, Team Mom for her twin sons’ youth baseball team, discovers that the brother of the detested league head has been found dead in the porta-potty at the ballfield, she is on the case. Given the victim’s strong resemblance to his brother, Meg suspects the head of the league may have been the intended victim, leaving her with a plethora of suspects who hated the genuinely despicable man.
Andrews brings the small town to life with its cast of caring neighbors who strongly support their young ballplayers and are determined that “the game must go on.”
Martin Edwards (editor), Settling Scores, Sporting Mysteries
Mystery-loving history buffs will thoroughly enjoy this anthology of short stories with sports settings ranging from cricket to tennis to horse racing. The British collection includes fiction written between 1894 and 1976 by such genre luminaries as Arthur Conan Doyle, Celia Fremlin, and Julian Symons. The stories feature wily detectives who brilliantly solve puzzling cases for which the solution is anything but obvious.
My personal favorite in the collection is “The Wimbledon Mystery” written by Julian Symons in the 1950s and originally published in the Evening Standard. When up-and-coming tennis star Jimmy Clayton mysteriously disappears from the men’s dressing room two days before his semifinal tennis match at Wimbledon, private detective Francis Quarles is hired to find him. He wastes no time discarding the police detective’s theory of the case on his way to masterfully rescuing the talented player from a dire situation just in time for his semifinal match.
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