Last Man Out

It is February 1946 in New York. World War II is over at last, and the first glorious postwar baseball season is on the horizon. Best of all, the Dodgers have a sensational rookie prospect, Harvey Tippen. Then fate throws a curve. Gorgeous young society heiress Gloria Manley is found brutally murdered in her East Side townhouse, along with her live-in maid. Harvey Tippen had been her lover - and now he tops the list of suspects. Caught between cops looking for a quick conviction and a Dodger ownership seeking to sweep the scandal under the carpet, and agonizing over a secret of his own he is afraid to confess, Tippen is coerced into a confession. It looks like Tippen's diamond future is over before it's begun - when baseball reporter Joe Tinker sends the game into extra innings. Tinker, whom fans of both baseball and mystery will remember from his debut in Donald Honig's acclaimed The Plot to Kill Jackie Robinson, finds himself far from the simple verities of the ballfield as he hunts the ugly truth about the young beauty who used men as playthings and made love a cruel sport. He is now in a world of cafe society and sophisticated sensuality, where the rich and the rapacious make their own rules for the games they play. Tinker must deal in very different ways with an oversexed divorcee...a producer who makes him question his notions of homosexuality...a macho actor who nay be overplaying his part...and a swaggering Lothario who caters to women with enough wealth to buy the very best in bed. At the same time he must persuade Roger Selman, a tough New York City police detective who has seen it all, that a vital piece of the puzzle has been overlooked. But nothing can prepare Tinker forwhat awaits him at the end of this twisted trail of desire and death amid the high jinks and low-down dirt of the smart set. With a wondrously created atmosphere of New York in the 1940s, when the Bums played at Ebbetts Field and the beautiful people paraded at the Copa, Donald Honig has written a mystery-thriller as rich in nostalgic magic as it is in spellbinding suspense. Ringing with authenticity, it is a solid hit all the way.Honig, Donald is the author of 'Last Man Out' with ISBN 9780451183002 and ISBN 0451183002.