Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
In the summer of 1918, wartime fever grips Chicago, rendering even pretzels and dachshunds verboten. Mickey Rawlings, journeyman second baseman and hero of Soos's last two mysteries (Murder at Fenway Park and Murder at Ebbets Fields) has a new shortstop to work with, Willie Kaiser. With a name like Kaiser, Willie is not the most popular guy in Chicago. On July 4th, while marching in a patriotic parade at Cubs Park (it would not be named Wrigley Field until 1926), Kaiser is fatally shot. Rawlings is determined to find out who did it. Among his suspects are the shortstop who lost his job to Willie; the Patriotic Knights of Liberty, an anti-German vigilante group; and Bennett Harrington, a part owner of the Cubs who would like to be the boss. Learning that Kaiser had worked in Harrington's war plant, Rawlings takes a job there to snoop. His life is endangered by an explosion set up by the plant's security chief, who belongs to the Patriotic Knights. When the security chief's body is found in the Chicago River, Rawlings wonders if he's the next target. Along with a first rate wartime Chicago atmosphere, Soos gives us cameo appearances by such baseball legends as Shoeless Joe Jackson and Bonehead Fred Merkle. Although this tale is slower paced than earlier stories, Rawlings still turns double plays and solves murders with equal grace. (Apr.)
Library Journal
This even-tempered Chicago mystery takes place in 1918, when army enlistments depleted the ranks of the Cubs. With someone capitalizing on anti-German sentiments by sabotaging several Cubs games, part-owner Charles Weeghman asks second baseman Mickey Rawlings to find the guilty party. After his best friend, Willie Kaiser, is murdered in the crowded Cubs ballpark, Rawlings sets out to find the killer. Low-key antics, attention to period detail, and subtle plot interweavings underscore this solid, simple work.
Kirkus Reviews
Summer, 1918. Anti-German fever runs high, even on the baseball diamond, where Mickey Rawlings is toiling as the Chicago Cubs' second baseman, part of a sweet double-play combination that's broken up when rookie shortstop Willie Kaiser, whose name never gets into the papers no matter how slick his glove, is shot in the middle of a Fourth of July maneuver on the field. An accidentally discharged weapon? A moment of kraut-killing madness? Willie's kid sister Edna Chapman, who's too nice to have much to say for herself, doesn't think so, and neither does Mickey. Moonlighting his way into Willie's old job at Bennett Harrington's Dearborn Fuel Company, and cozying up to Dearborn security guard Curly Neeman's buddies in the Patriotic Knights of Liberty, Mickey convinces himself that Willie's shooting is linked to a fierce struggle for power in the major leagues, and maybe even to a treasonable secret somebody would kill to protect. But how can Mickey—who can't even find his own missing hot-water heater—make a case when everybody he can tie in to Willie's murder ends up dead?
Compensating for the subpar mystery, Mickey's third (Murder at Ebbets Field, 1995, etc.) is Soos's quietly effective portrait of wartime Chicago in the throes of painful German-baiting and on the verge of Prohibition.
