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Griffith Stadium
Robert Ambros, author
It is 1939 and as war breaks out in Europe, a young American communist, Lou Harris, is brutally murdered at a Washington, D.C. baseball park. No one seems to care until the victim's older brother, Jack, an investigative reporter, arrives from St. Louis. With the help of Lou's girlfriend, Maggie Thorton, Jack uncovers his brother's connections not only with the American Communist Party, but with the FBI and the work force as well. When Jack discovers a list of murdered communists his brother put together, he is targeted by powerful forces. Jack uses the list and all his investigative skills to learn that his brother's murder was tied to the outbreak of war in Europe. Now he must find the killer and expose a grand scheme before he himself is hunted down.
Reviews
Jack Haynes, the compelling, flawed hero of this historical thriller set in 1939, is working as a reporter in St. Louis when he gets a call that his brother, Lou Harris, was murdered in Griffith Stadium, the major-league ballpark of Washington, D.C. Jack, who adopted a new last name to help conceal some damaging secrets about his past, hadn’t seen Lou since their mother died while waiting in a soup line eight years earlier. At the time, the destitute 19-year-old Jack, unable to figure out how he could care for 13-year-old Lou, gave up Lou to a foster home. Jack drops everything to race to D.C. to learn the truth, only to find that the police believe Lou had been a Communist and aren’t actively looking for the killer. Determined to get justice for his brother, Jack turns sleuth. Ambros does a solid job of making Jack’s occasionally amateurish efforts plausible. Fans of Sarah R. Shaber’s WWII-era mysteries (Louise’s Blunder, etc.) will enjoy this effort with its darkly satisfying ending. (BookLife)
