Book Review: Murder at Fenway Park

Visits: 4

Murder and baseball? As long as it’s fiction, those are two of my favorite things in one (certainly never OK with actual murder), so this reviewer was expecting to be entertained when he picked up Murder at Fenway Park by Troy Soos. Hailed as “A Mickey Rawlings Baseball Mystery” on the front cover, the work looked to be about to provide a baseball CSI: or sorts.

As comes of no surprise, Mickey Rawlings is the main character of the book. Promising not to provide any spoilers or give away any who-dun-its, we will run through the basic plot. The book starts in present day with Rawlings visiting the Baseball Hall of Fame. He is being honored as the oldest living former Major League Baseball player. Rawlings makes it clear he didn’t exactly expect the honor and it’s evident that he is honest about his extremely average big league career. In any event, he is there to take in a game at Doubleday Field and have his name called out.

While touring the museum during his visit, Rawlings sees a display of old baseball cards. He soon notices that one of them is his own card from many years ago. This realization takes the reader back to the year 1912 in Boston, MA. Rawlings is a young player who has bounced around with a few Major League and semi-pro clubs over the past couple of the years. The Red Sox have recently purchased his contract due to a few injuries on their roster. The favorite to with the World Series, the Sox don’t expect Rawlings to see the field much, but need a utility player to hit the field when needed and picked him.

The book gets off to a quick start as Rawlings arrives at Fenway Park in the evening hours, when very few people are still present. As he makes his way through the halls of the park, he discovers a dead, badly beaten, body. All of the sudden Rawlings’ life is turned upside down.

In the subsequent pages, the reader will find another murder, Rawlings being accused of both at various times, a love interest, a potential plot to kill Rawlings, a whole intricate ring of betting on baseball and many pages spent on how dirty of a man Ty Cobb was back in the day.

The work was brief and entertaining. Something that might be suitable for a holiday read or as a nice paperback to take to the beach. It doesn’t lack in story line or plot, but at times seems to confuse itself with the amount of characters it attempts to have woven into a relatively brief story. It’s worth the time, but don’t expect to list it at the top of your list of murder mysteries when you’re done. There are various other works in the same series by this author as well.

The paperback work was published in 1994 by Kensington Books. The 252-page book retails for $14.00.

Baseball Reflections Rating: 3/5

If murder and baseball interests you as much as it does this reviewer, we encourage you to check out our reviews on A Deadly Game and The Manager’s Daughter.