Prairie Hardball

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

Alison Gordon once covered the Toronto Blue Jays for the Toronto Star.
This is her fifth novel featuring amateur sleuth Kate Henry, who covers
the Toronto Titans for the Toronto Planet. This time, however, Kate is
not watching games at the Titan Dome or at the Florida spring training
camp. The players in this story earned $55 a week playing ball in the
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during the war. Some
came from Saskatchewan, and are now about to be inducted into that
province’s Baseball Hall of Fame. One of them is Kate’s mother, and
Kate has returned for the event to her prairie roots in a small town
where “the narrowest minds create community standards, and God help
the poor souls who don’t conform.” She is accompanied,
uncomfortably, by the Toronto homicide detective with whom she lives,
who observes that “Kate attracts murderers the way other people
attract mosquitoes.” One of the elderly inductees is found strangled
in the Hall of Fame, and the game is afoot. Before it reaches its end,
readers are treated to some glimpses of small-town prairie life, a
cluster of suspects are presented, and a shocking family secret is
revealed to Kate.

Gordon is not in the front rank of Canadian crime writers. Her novels
do not provide the richly detailed description of local color or
psychological depth of, for instance, L.R. Wright, and the suspense they
generate is modest. Still, they generate story, which unfolds mostly in
dialogue, moves at an amiable pace and provides a pleasant evening
diversion.