Smiths' Baseball Mystery a Winner

December 29, 2008

Nothing is harder to do in baseball literature than to write a terrific baseball novel. If anything, it is even harder to write a baseball mystery novel worth reading. Usually, there is either too much baseball and not enough mystery, or vice versa. I, for one, have been able to finish very few baseball mysteries. That's why I am able to recommend Dirty Water, written by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith and her son Jere, and published by Hall of Fame Press (of Kingston, Rhode Island). It is a perfect blend of the two elements, and I not only finished the novel, I enjoyed it very much.

Dirty Water was written by a pair of diehard Boston Red Sox fans, and they delight not only in using the storied Red Sox franchise and the 2007 season as a backdrop to the story, but also in involving actual Red Sox players, primarily 1B-DH David Ortiz, in the action. The pot starts simmering when an abandoned infant boy is discovered in the Red Sox clubhouse. Shortly thereafter a woman who turns out to be the baby's mother is found murdered on the swampy banks of a river running behind Fenway Park, and it is way past time to get Rocky Patel, Boston Homicide Detective First Grade, on the case.

An Indian immigrant, Patel is not particularly well versed in either baseball or any number of American customs or phrases, but he is shrewd about human nature and exhibits unerring instincts about criminal activity and motivation. His partner, Sargeant Marty Flanagan, is the more hard-boiled type; and as a local boy who is also, unlike Patel, on the prowl for anything tempting in a skirt, he makes a good foil to his boss. After a few missteps, the pair get to the bottom of the dirty business they are investigating, and the conclusion is both violent and satisfyingly plausible. Along the way, Smith provides numerous nice touches for the reader's enjoyment, such as her description of a receptionist's not liking "being ignored by someone she was ignoring" and the apt observation implicit in the statement: "The questions were typical of an aggressive young press corps; ninety per cent of the queries began with the same numbskull phrase having to do with feelings. 'How did you feel when you heard about the abandoned baby?' 'How did Terry Francona feel when he learned Baby Ted's mother had been murdered?' 'How did the police feel when they realized they'd arrested Baby Ted's father.' " As the novel proceeds, actual Red Sox personages appear more and more infrequently on stage, but this is as it should be, as the unraveling of the mystery is what makes or breaks every detective story. Nevertheless, what never fades away from the reader's consciousness is the scene of the murder, the muddy Back Bay Fens where the dirty water runs. These environs of Fenway Park are depicted so strikingly that they almost become another character in the story.