I love a good mystery. I also love the game of baseball and I am a history buff. This book was a three in one pleasure for me. It combines all three of these subjects in a flowing style that is a joy to read. Not only does it bring to life the baseball heros that we never got the chance to see, but it also gives us an idea of what it was like to live in those times. Do yourself a favor and read this book it is like taking a trip in a time machine.

Being a mystery writer with my first novel in its initial release, I have been a great admirer of Troy Soos for years. I have been reading his Mickey Rawlings novels since the beginning, and I wrote an early critical essay about them that appeared in Mystery Reader's Journal. Since the publication of that essay, Soos has written two fresh Mickey Rawlings mysteries, and HANGING CURVE is easily the strongest in the entire series. HANGING CURVE lands Mickey, our journeyman everyman, in St. Louis where he is playing for the Browns and tangling with the KKK. He's attempting to solve a murder, a lynching, amid the racial turmoil of the Roaring Twenties in America's Midwest. As always, the mystery elements of these books are terrific. Another crucial element of these novels is the historical backdrop that Soos paints with his words. His history is painstakingly researched and utterly accurate. In HANGING CURVE, Soos presents an era with social problems of which many people may be unaware. On all levels, HANGING CURVE is the best mystery Troy Soos has written so far. Great book, whether or not you love baseball (as you should).

Troy Soos had me hooked with Murder at Ebbetts Field. Having been a former ballplayer myself, I was able to live vicariously through Mickey Rawlings. Soos' writing style transports you back to the days when baseball was a game and you played for the love of it. Hanging Curve is as gripping as any mystery I've ever read. Combined with Soos' historical accounts, I swear I felt like I was watching him from the stands at Sportsman's Park. Mickey Rawlings takes the reader on every adventure, like you're helping him solve the crime. It took me two nights to read this book -- I couldn't put it down until I found out "who-done-it." The bigger mystery to me is when Mickey will get his chance to play in the Series and, more importantly, when will he finally say his "I do's" with Margie???

This is the third in the Mickey Rawlings series ("Murder at Fenway Park" and "Murder at Ebbetts Field" precede it). Rawlings, a utility infielder who gets traded more often than baseball cards, again finds himself nearby when a murder is committed. This time it is a fellow Cubs teammate, Willy Kaiser. Willy is Rawlings' friend and he vows to track down the killer. Could it be: 1. A player Willy displaced at shortstop, out to get revenge? 2. Another baseball club owner out to destroy the Cubs? 3. Any one of the many citizens whipped into a frenzy by the anti-war propoganda being spread around the US? The plot gets pretty thick as Mickey teams up with his old newspaper buddy, Landfors, to try to sort out fact from fiction. There are many colorful characters we meet on the way including ballplayers, owners, factory workers, German immigrants, businessmen, and members of an anti-war organization. Mickey is in only slightly less danger than in the earlier books. The real danger seems to be that he'll be cut from the team and forced to travel to Europe to fight for his country. Although I'm not a scholar of the period (1918), the descriptions seem to be accurate enough and some of the characters are not fictional (though their actions are) in order to end more realism to the work.

In 1918 Mickey Rawlings, no longer a rookie, plays for the Chicago Cubs in the midst of America's anti-German hysteria during the hot days of World War I. His buddy, rookie Willie Kaiser, tormented by fans and teammates, becomes moody and morose and Mickey worries about him. Meanwhile someone begins a campaign of harassment against the team. He releases smoke bombs, saws bleacher seats so they collapse, and puts pretzels at all concessions stands so the team is vilified in the press for being pro-German. To cap it all off, someone reduces Mickey to cold showers by stealing his hot water heater.

When Charles Weeghmann, builder of the field and President of the Cubs, suspects William Wrigley is the saboteur because he wants to take over the tea, he asks Mickey to investigate. Then, in the midst of the on-field 4th of July celebration, Willie Kaiser dies of a gunshot wound.

If Soos intends to portray the tenor of the times as well as to present a Q story as intriguing as Bobby Thompson's home run, and a character as irresistible as a beer and hot dog (and I'm sure he does),I'd say he's batting at least .450.

The appealing and resourceful Mickey probes at the very source of America's neuroses at a time when the music of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven is banned, the director of the Boston Symphony jailed for playing German music, German-Americans are being lynched, and even innocent Dachshunds and German shepherds neglected or killed. But the world will right itself again, and even professional baseball survives the turmoil.

Soos's characters are fully developed and intriguing. His portrait of an earlier America in the throes of war hysteria says a lot to us today. We can take the warning to heart. There are no lectures here, though, just a rousing good tale.

Mr. Soos does a very good job with the plot by not trying to cram too much into the book. Youc an follow the plot lines yet still be surprised at how it turns out. A little light on the baseball part but it doesn't hurt the book at all.

This is a very well researched book. The author included a lot of sidebars, photos and illustrations that make it more entertaining. It still has moments when it drags if one attempts to read it straight through, but it is a good coffee table book and fun to browse. Mr. Soos is also the author of an excellent series of baseball related mysteries set from 1912 -1922.

A very informative work regarding New England base ball. There are numerous pictures, boxscores and newspaper accounts covering college, club and professional base ball.

This was the first Mickey Rawlings book I read and I enjoyed it very much. The author creates a wonderful sense of time and place. Highly recommended for baseball lovers who are mystery fans.

Troy Soos continues the story of journeyman Mickey Rawlings. This time he plays for the Cincinnati Reds.

It's 1921 and baseball is reeling from the Black Sox scandal. Mickey is threatened with expulsion from the game because of bogus gambling charges. In addition, Mickey is investigating two murders more than 50 years apart.

As a long-time resident of Cincinnati, OH, this book was especially enjoyable to me. I'm too young to have attended games in Redland/Crosley field, so it was good to be able to go there, at least vicariously. I'm eagerly awaiting the next Troy Soos novel.

If you are a baseball fan and a mystery reader, it doesn't get any better than this. The author re-creates the era of 1921, when the Cincinnati nine were still reeling from having been cheated out of their victory over the Chicago "Black Sox" by accusations that the fix was in. Having felt the summer heat of Cincinnati and having seen many games at Redlands (Crosley Field), this brought it all back. I can't wait to read Troy Soos' other mysteries.

Troy Soos' baseball mysteries are always fun to read. Full of historical baseball references as well as a murder mystery that usually takes place in the opening pages, you can't help being caught up in the adventures of utility infielder Mickey Rawlings. This particular story takes place in 1920 when Mickey finds a slot on the Detroit Tigers, playing along side the temperamental Ty Cobb. Mickey is unjustly accused of murdering a union organizer, merely because of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Pick this one up soon and especially if you're a true baseball fan you will enjoy reading of the events of the time as well as a good time mystery. Highly recommended.

I don't often finish a mystery, but this book had me wanting to know what comes next. Mickey Rawlings is a charming character because he is very human, and the story is absorbing because it involves a wide variety of details from 1920 -- labor wars, the Detroit Tigers, vaudeville, etc. A good, entertaining read.

This is highly entertaining addition to a highly entertaining series.

Mickey Rawlings is nicely drawn as the 25th man on the roster, always struggling to keep his spot on the team, ever mindful that injury to himself or getting on the wrong side team management could mark the end of his baseball career.

The baseball sequences are great. I've always been more of a fan of baseball history than baseball present and really enjoy the details provided.

The storyline's outside the ballpark are equally enjoyable. In this edition we get some insight into the workings of the IWW and Henry Ford's secret police as Mickey works to clear himself of a murder in self defense charge.

This is a really fun read.

Somehow this was just not up to the plot and flavor of the writer's other mysteries. Perhaps it was a result of mixing silent movie making and baseball. I wanted more Ebbetts Field, Casey Stengel, etc. I watched many Dodger games in that old park, and I wanted to relive the feeling. Soos accomplished that in his mysteries about the Reds and the Red Sox, but I felt a little let down this time around.

In this 1914 period piece, sometime infielder Mickey Rawlings hopes his NY Giants will beat the Dodgers and earn a shot at the World Series. There's a movie crew shooting the game and right next to the Dodger's dugout, Mickey sees the luscious and famous movie star, Florence Hampton. When the director asks for a man from each team as bit players, the Dodgers pick Casey Stengel and the Giants choose Mickey.

The Giants lose the game (and baseball fans and non fans alike will appreciate Soos's short and vivid game descriptions), the glamorous Miss Hampton whisks Rawlings and Stengel away to film some scenes, then they're off to a champagne party. The next morning Mickey takes his hangover for a walk on the beach and finds Hampton's bloated body washed up on the beach. His friend, journalist Karl Landfors, talks him into investigating Hampton's death.

Soos's simple, almost journalistic prose holds the reader captive in the early 20th century baseball world. Soos, a physicist at MIT, says he always liked "reading mysteries and doing physics mostly for the puzzle...I think Peter Lovesey's Cribb & Thackery series is what got me writing historicals."

He uses books, film and photos to learn how the cities looked in the early part of the century. "I do use actual incidents and players, then I start to play the game of 'what if?' to tie them together in a mystery plot."

Although I'm a baseball fan, I don't consider myself a fan of historical baseball -- at least I wasn't until I discovered Soos's series. He's managed to change that.

This is a very entertaining series, all of the books combine baseball, mystery and history and are well written. This is one of the best, the portrait of Casey Stengal is great.

A treat for those who like well crafted historical fiction. We get an aroma of rough and tumble New York of 1893. The squalor, disease, poverty, corruption, cynicism, poll-stuffing. Nothing like our New York, of course, where such things have been banished forevermore.

While reading this, I could not help comparing the atmosphere it evoked with that in the time travel classic "Time and Again" by Jack Finney. That was set in 1870s New York. But close enough, perhaps, from our perspective. The Dakota building figures in both, as do other landmarks. The difference is that Soos's book gives a more in-depth study of the warts and the underbelly.

This was the second Mickey Rawlings book I read and I thought the "Cincinnati Red Stalkings" was much better. I thought that the characters in "Murder at Fenway Park" were not very well-developed or differentiated from each other. I also thought that most of the middle of the book consisted of Mickey going from here to there without advancing the plot or doing much detecting. I look forward to reading the other books in the series but don't recommend this one.

There is just the right mixture of baseball, mayhem, and 1921 events to make a fine book. The author's subsequent baseball mysteries are a little better, but this one certainly satisies. Of course, if you're not a baseball fan, this may leave you a little cold--no pun about death intended.

Troy Soos has started a wonderful series with this first installment of the Mickey Rawlings mysteries. The combination of the early 1900s time period, the freshness of a young kid new to the big leagues, and a murder intertwined with baseball is great. It is an easy and quick read. The setting plays a big part of the appeal of this mystery novel--which Soos masterfully creates. The mystery/plot is believable and does keep the reader in suspense. I eagerly await each installment of this series. Soos writing seems to get progressively better.

ISLAND OF TEARS, by Mickey Rawlings's creator Troy Soos, introduces a promising newcomer to the detective genre; Marshall Webb. If you're looking for a period mystery as substantial as THE ALIENIST, THE ANGEL OF DARKNESS, any of Anne Perry's novels, or even Stephen Saylor's A TWIST AT THE END and the Roma Sub Rosa series, then you're bound to be disappointed. Soos's book is charitably weighed in at 280 pages (at least 40 of which are blanks between chapters) and he obviously doesn't luxuriate in the period as Carr or Saylor do (which is unusual for a historian-turned-novelist such as the two abovementioned). This is a meat-and-potatoes mystery and is typical for the genre in length, denouement, characterization, and execution.

Marshall Webb is likable enough as a hero but he almost completely lacks the sense of humor that makes Mickey Rawlings such a favorite of Soos's earlier fans. Webb depresses me, frankly. One of the biggest reasons why it's so hard to connect with Webb is because ISLAND OF TEARS isn't told with the usual first person narrative that is so typical of the mystery genre. The reader is told about Webb's impressions instead of being able to read his mind as we've rightly come to expect. Mickey Rawlings, who *does* benefit from first person narrative, is better able to entertain us with his baseball play, his knowledge of the game, and with his unconventional humor. There is nothing entertaining nor uplifting about a humorless hack with writer's block, especially if he's a dime novelist.

The denouement and unmasking of the killer was telegraphed much earlier than it should've been and overall the motive, opportunity, and means of the murder seemed flat and uninspired. The supporting cast of Crombie, Gehringer, Rebecca Davies, et al seems to be a promising ensemble and I look forward to seeing these characters develop along with Webb. I only hope they have more humor the next time around and are involved with a longer, more substantial murder mystery.

Author Troy Soos paints a lively picture of America in the early 20th century. Corruption in Tamany Hall, the struggle of immigrants desperate to survive in the jungle of New York, the conflict between new technology (the motion picture camera) and its potential uses for good, are all part of the landscape. As compelling as all of this is, I don't think the story ever really draws us into its spell. I felt as though I were an outsider listening to someone describe the scenes, rather than a participant engrossed with the mystery of the story.

The central mystery of the story involves the disappearance of a newly-arrived immigrant from the Netherlands, who piques the interest of dime story novelist Marshall Webb. He hopes to use her tale - preferably a happy rags-to-riches story - as the basis for his next story. Instead, Christina vanishes and Marshall is drawn into a tangle of coincidences, corruption, and evil. The novel is populated with a wealth of characters: the socialite-turned-social-worker, the girls in the clubs, the crooks preying on innocent immigrants, the inventor, and so on. None of them, unfortunately, takes on any sort of vivid life. They are well-described, but curiously flat on the page. And at the end of the story, the loose ends are tied up neatly - but in a way that again feels flat and emotionless.

This is a decent period piece that will give the reader some good descriptions of New York City at the turn of the century, but within hours of finishing the book, its characters will be indistinguishable from each other, and will quickly fade from memory.

In 1892, the first ship debarks at Ellis Island loaded with hopeful immigrants looking forward to a new start on the first day of the new year. A contributor to Harper's Weekly, dime novelist Marshall Webb is at the scene of the docking to observe the goings-on so he can write a series of articles and eventually a book. On the island, Marshal meets Dutch arrival Christina Van der Waak, whose trust and optimism in the American system he believes will make quite a good story, but she instantly vanishes.

Marshall concludes that there is more to Christina than just the tale of an upbeat emigrant and he begins to make inquiries into what happened to her. His investigation takes Marshall all over Manhattan and leads to reformist Rebecca Davies and Colden House, a shelter for abused women. Rebecca joins Marshall on his quest as the search for the apparently abducted young woman turns frantic and quite dangerous.

ISLAND OF TEARS is a detailed historical mystery with romance to spice up the relationship between the lead duo. The story line is filled with action that occasionally slows down when author Troy Soos pays homage to the Gay Nineties with incredible descriptive depths rarely seen in a novel. This e thrilling mystery enlightens and entertains the audience. Hopefully further collaborations between Rebecca and Christina will occur as fans of historical tales will believe Mr. Soos hit a home run off of that HANGING CURVE.

Harriet Klausner