Tag Archives: sports

The Code by Gare Joyce (2011) – BR00281 (2025) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
July 4 2025

Plot or Premise

Brad Shade is a former professional hockey player turned low-level scout for an NHL team from LA, scouting the European leagues and the Canadian minors. He plays in an old-timers game in Peterborough just before the coach and the team doctor get murdered in the parking lot.x

What I Liked

When I started reading the book, I had no memory of how I had found it or added it to my TBR pile. A hockey scout playing sleuth, with the murder set in Peterborough and the OHL? How could I NOT read it? I assumed I read that it was set in Peterborough and so I snagged it. Turns out that I had looked it up because it is the basis for the TV show Private Eyes set in Toronto with Jason Priestly as the lead character, Brad Shade. It ran for a couple of seasons, and I tripped over it on a bingefest. The show is watchable, if not high quality, so I grabbed the book to give it a go.

I should have started by saying that I’m not really a sports nut. I read mysteries set in and around sports, but it’s not really about the sports for me. About 20 years ago, I read Alison Gordon’s Kate Henry mystery series about a former Toronto sportswriter turned sleuth, and quite enjoyed them. I interacted with her a few times online through a discussion forum, which blew a friend of me away — I had actually CORRESPONDED with Ms. Gordon? Wow, he said. I had no idea who she was, I just bought her books as I liked the way she approached things in the forum. I feel like Brad Shade is what Kate Henry would have been if Alison had followed hockey instead of baseball.

I like Brad and the story for the most part. He’s trying to get a handle on a rising star in the OHL, and whether LA should draft him or not. If you’ve watched Kevin Costner in the movie Draft Day, or any episode of Friday Night Lights, you’ll understand a bunch of the concerns that Brad is looking at are designed to make sure their draft choice is solid not only for the hockey side of things but also the character side of the player. Brad figures out the full mystery and ties it all up in a nice bow at the end.

What I Didn’t Like

There are four things that took away from the writing for me. First and foremost, it is painfully obvious almost from the outset what the problem is with the player, and what the motive is that accompanies it, if not all the details. Yet it seems like for 80% of the book, Brad is in the dark. And while he should be in the dark about murder, this isn’t his first rodeo for a draft cycle. If it were set back in the 70s or even 80s, I might let some of it slide, but in 2012, it was hard to see how any part of it was supposed to “stay hidden”.

Secondly, even if the main “mystery” worked, the writing has some glaring red flags for point of view shifts and terrible foreshadowing. In at least four or five places, the “reveal” from Brad figuring something out is an opening line or closing line of a chapter where he says something along the lines of someone in the Star Wars universe saying, “If I had known Darth Vader was Luke’s father, I would have handled it differently.” They are these “exposition” dumps that just throw out a major plot point like he had no idea how to reveal it more subtly.

Thirdly, I started the book cold, so I had no idea what it was about. It took me three or four chapters in, something like 14% of the book on my Kindle to get out of exposition and into the mystery. There was a huge backstory about him having problems with customs in Europe that ate up the opening chapter that had NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING. I don’t know how an editor didn’t cut all that or tell him to remove it. It was a giant dumping of backstory.

Lastly, I had a problem with the plot and pacing. Something semi-significant happens a week or two after the murder, and Brad doesn’t seem to twig to why it’s important. There are reasons to hide stuff, but not all of it. Then something HUGE happens, it reveals 100% of the answer to the mystery of who killed the Coach and 98% of why…dun dun dun…and Brad sits on it for two months so that it can all be revealed at draft day. But — spoiler alert — he’s fake blackmailing the killer who is UNSTABLE but Brad believes that he’ll do what he says for the two months. Huh? And the whole point of waiting is so that they can do something that makes them look good at the draft, and saves their job with the owner, while screwing someone else aka the real Code that anger in hockey dies slow. But he lets the unstable psychopathic murderer wander around for two months, some other bad people involved keep doing their thing, never tells his girlfriend who it was who tried to kill her, etc. It is freaking weird. The timelines could have EASILY been adjusted to line up properly with draft day, but instead, there’s this late lull in Act III. SMH.

Going back again for a moment, I grabbed the book because it’s based on the TV series. But as I read it, I didn’t even remember, because the book is so different from the series. However, I found myself excited that it was set in Peterborough…yet no mention of Peterborough’s actual team name (the Petes), which he probably couldn’t do, and the name of the arena is changed too, of course. But even for the setting in Peterborough, where he could have referenced more local stuff, there are literally only two references to Peterborough street names. Including one street name that he uses to suggest someone has an expensive house on the street — except there are almost NO expensive houses anywhere on that street. And there are any number of streets that could have been mentioned instead. Which made me realize that if he had set it in Oshawa or Ottawa or anywhere else, and changed three details, it would have been GenericCityAnywhereOntario. Not something to mark the story down, but the other issues dropped it down from a good four stars to three.

The Bottom Line

Very different from the TV show, but sports sleuths are fun

The Collected Short Stories by Jeffrey Archer (1998) – BR00027 (2003) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
July 27 2003

Plot or Premise

This book is an amazing collection of 36 shortstories from a master storyteller combining romance, history, danger, twists, international intrigue, and domestic angst.

What I Liked

The collection is a really nice mix, particularly some of the ones with twist endings. Here is an overview of each of the stories and the ratings for each.

  • NEVER STOP ON THE MOTORWAY: Woman driver is chased by a van down the motorway, with the context backlit by recent rapes and murders. Fantastic twist. 5.00
  • OLD LOVE: Two competitors, one boy, one girl compete against each other in everything including who loves the other more and are inseparable throughout life. 4.50
  • SHOESHINE BOY: Mountbatten (sic) pays a visit to St. George’s where a drastically underfunded Governor rolls out the red carpet. 4.50
  • CHEAP AT HALF THE PRICE: Mrs. Rosenheim wants a bauble from the jewelry store but has to play hustle to get the men in her life to commit to buying it. 4.00
  • BROKEN ROUTINE: A man whose routine is unflappable is somewhat disturbed by a brash youth on the train who wants to read his paper and smoke his cigarettes. Nice twist. 4.50
  • AN EYE FOR AN EYE: A woman has an alibi for the death of her husband: she was not only in the hospital (although the time is shaky) but also blind…or is she? 4.00
  • THE LUNCHEON: A up and coming man takes an attractive (married) woman to lunch to try and get business favours. Unfortunately, lunch is expensive and he has no budget. 3.50
  • THE COUP: Two business rivals are stranded in Nigeria during a coup, and they end up resolving their differences and being the real coup. 3.50
  • THE PERFECT MURDER: A man commits an accidental murder of his mistress after finding out she was also stepping out with another man and manages to frame the man for the murder. A cute twist at the end. 4.00
  • YOU’LL NEVER LEARN TO REGRET IT: David is dying of AIDS and leaving everything to Pat. They trick the insurance company despite his condition and collect handsomely on David’s death. But insurance companies are sometimes trickier than one might think, as are their brokers. 3.75
  • THE FIRST MIRACLE: A cute twist on an old tale has a historical figure running errands around the birth of Christ. 3.50
  • THE LOOPHOLE: Two friends get into a heated argument at the club and not only engage in slander but also physical fighting, leading to a legal battle and an eventual settlement, yet the two remain friends. 4.00
  • THE HUNGARIAN PROFESSOR: An Englishman visits Hungary for the Olympics and meets a Professor who knows all about England and wants to practice his English and talk about all the sites in London. 4.25
  • THE STEAL: A tightly-budgeted couple takes a vacation and is forced to endure the overblown ramblings of an obnoxiously rich couple, up to and including the purchase of an oriental rug. 4.75
  • CHRISTINA ROSENTHAL: A strange story of a Jewish marathon runner and the gentile woman he fell in love with, and the strange stories of their love over time. 4.25
  • COLONEL BULLFROG: A Colonel becomes a POW in Asia shortly before the end of WWII and the strange relationship that develops between the captive and the captors. 4.00
  • DO NOT PASS GO: A political refugee resettles in America, but during a return flight to the area of his birth, his plane is forced to land in Iraq, where there is a bounty on his head. 3.50
  • CHUNNEL VISION: A strange tale of a man about to be dumped by his latest fling, where the woman runs up expensive charges at a restaurant where the man explains to an old friend a detailed plot of an upcoming novel. The old friend, also a novelist, is horrified as the plot is the plot of his latest best-seller, and the man doesn’t know. 4.00
  • DOUGIE MORTIMER’S RIGHT ARM: A story of rowers and the mysterious cast of the arm of one of the first rowers which keeps disappearing from the rower’s club. 3.75
  • CLEAN SWEEP IGNATIUS: A Nigerian Minister of Finance wants to cut out the heart of corruption and flys to Switzerland to get the names of the citizens in his country who have Swiss bank accounts. 4.00
  • NOT FOR SALE: An up-and-coming artist gets swept off her feet by a gallery owner who wines and dines her to finish some stunning paintings for her first showing, with initially tragic results. 4.00
  • ONE-NIGHT STAND: Two male friends are inseparable until they meet a woman that impresses both of them, despite each being already married, and they both pursue her with reckless abandon, cutting each other off in each attempt until one finally succeeds. Neat feminist twist. 4.50
  • A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS: An art hustler likes to borrow paintings and then return them, while at the same time picking up the nearest available wife for a turn around the studio. Burned twice, a gallery owner plots an act of terminal revenge. 4.00
  • CHECKMATE: An elaborate plan to trick a woman into bed revolves around a game of “strip”-chess. But the plan goes too well for a while, and then a final twist to set things right. 4.00
  • THE CENTURY: A sports tale of an elaborate cricket match of Herculean competition between two giants at Oxford and Cambridge. 3.50
  • JUST GOOD FRIENDS: A strange bar tale leading to a new companion for a recently-bruised male ego. 4.00
  • HENRY’S HICCUP: A rich man tries to hold on to his comfortable life despite the impact of the Great War in Europe. After the war, he’s disappointed to find privilege doesn’t return to the owner. 4.00
  • A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE: An upright (and uptight) businessman tries to export his business values to Mexico when he tries to get a construction contract. 4.50
  • TRIAL AND ERROR: More of a short novella than a short story, this is the tale of a man convicted of murder who hires the straightest arrow at Scotland Yard to find the corpse which he thinks is still walking around very much alive, and that his wife was in on the frame. 4.50
  • THE PERFECT GENTLEMAN: A publisher visits a club in NYC and grabs hold of a story of a backgammon championship from the 1930s and how a non-player apparently beat the world champion despite numerous setbacks that week. 4.50
  • À LA CARTE: A boy wants to follow his father’s footsteps working at a car factory, but his father makes him work for a year in London to see if he can find something more upwardly mobile, and he does: chef! 4.00
  • THE CHINESE STATUE: A man travels to China as a diplomat and is given a statue of some value by a peasant, and has to try and find a way to repay the debt. 4.50
  • THE WINE TASTER: A wine taster is challenged to a duel of palates by an unscrupulous rich upstart. 4.00
  • TIMEO DANAOS…: A bank branch manager with pretensions to grandeur takes his wife on a Mediterranean cruise, and she wants to buy a new dinner service. 4.00
  • NOT THE REAL THING: A strange combination of foreign governments, an engineer who helps rebuild their basic services, a woman with two suitors who marries the engineer, and the desire of the engineer to show up his now important former rival (despite the fact that the engineer won the girl). All in all, a story worthy of medals (a subplot of the story). 4.50
  • ONE MAN’S MEAT…: A story told in two parts. The first part is the intro — a man sees a beautiful woman entering a theatre, and finagles a seat next to her. Then, he asks her to dinner and the story diverges into four possible endings.
    • RARE: Everything goes perfectly, all too well in fact, and the ending is a depressing twist. 4.00
    • BURNT: The woman’s husband turns up, so the night is a bust and goes downhill from there. 4.25
    • OVERDONE: Everything goes horrible between the two, and the woman is basically a shrew and the meal feels like a battle scene. 4.00
    • À POINT: An amazing combination of optimism and lightheartedness that outshines the other three endings by far. 5.00

What I Didn’t Like

That there weren’t even more stories or that some of the really good ones weren’t longer!

The Bottom Line

An excellent collection.

Field of Thirteen by Dick Francis (1998) – BR00018 (2001) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
March 4 2001

Plot or Premise

A collection of thirteen short stories, eight of which were published previously in various magazines.

What I Liked

  • Dead on Red – A contract killer kills a jockey for another jockey, but the results are not quite what the surviving jockey had desired. (4.00/5.00)
  • Song for Mona – A snobbish daughter is ashamed of her mother’s life and history while others find her charming and praise her. (4.00/5.00)
  • Collision Course – An editor loses his job and runs into snobs who won’t let him park his boat at their restaurant while he has dinner with three publishers. Turns out the owner is a up-and-comer who needs to win an upcoming race in order to attract horses to his farm. An interesting battle develops. (4.00/5.00)
  • Carrot for a Chestnut – Fixing a race by doping the horse with a doctored carrot. With a great twist at the end. (3.50/5.00)
  • Blind Chance – A man has a perfect way to know the outcomes of photo-finish races, and to make money on it. Until disaster strikes. (4.00/5.00)
  • Corkscrew – An honest man is charged with a crime and his lawyer swindles his parents out of the bail money. He doesn’t count on the road to justice being long and windy. (3.75/5.00)
  • The Day of the Losers — Money from an old robbery is the glue that holds this story together as the police attempt to fix a race in order to catch a crook. There are twists all around at the end. (3.50/5.00)
  • Haig’s Death – All the people who have their fates resting on the outcome of a race are all affected when the decision falls to the judge, whose fate has already been decided. Multiple storylines all lead to a combined finish. (3.50/5.00)

What I Didn’t Like

  • Raid at Kingdom Hill – A bomb scare at the racetrack, and money goes missing during the chaos. (2.00/5.00)
  • Bright White Star – The theft of a horse from an auction and a wandering tramp who is displaced from his home on the land…includes a great set-up/intro though — “Write us a story,” they said. I asked, “What about?” “About three thousand words,” they replied. (2.00/5.00)
  • Nightmare – A horse thief is running from his past where his father was killed during a theft. (2.50/5.00)
  • The Gift – A down-and-out alcoholic journalist finds the horseracing story of the century, but may be too drunk to write it. (2.00/5.00)
  • Spring Fever – A woman falls in love with her jockey and is taken advantage of, at first. (2.50/5.00)

The Bottom Line

An average Francis collection.

Striking Out by Alison Gordon (1995) – BR00062 (1999) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸

The PolyBlog
October 10 1999

Plot or Premise

This is the fourth in the Kate Henry series and is the best so far. Kate is bored — there is a strike in the major leagues and she doesn’t know what to do with herself. So she focuses on her home life. Then Andy Munro gets shot in the line of duty, and Kate is pretty much on her own while Andy recuperates. Lots of tension as Andy deals with the aftermath of being shot.

What I Liked

The focus of the story is on a homeless woman named Maggie who has disappeared, and one of her favorite resting places is covered in blood. On top of that, a mutilated corpse turns up with a very large knife that Maggie used to own. A corpse of someone who knew who Maggie really was, knew her past, and was therefore a threat to Maggie’s security. Some really seedy characters populate the story, including a two-bit child pornographer who has a heart of gold for helping street people.

What I Didn’t Like

Of course, there is the requisite protagonist-in-jeopardy part, but at least Andy isn’t automatically there to save the day.

Disclosure

I was am not personal friends with the author, but I did do interact with her online.

The Bottom Line

Well done and the best so far

Beyond the Great Snow Mountains by Louis L’Amour (1999) – BR00050 (1999) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
August 11 1999

Plot or Premise

A collection of ten short stories.

What I Liked

  • Crash Landing — A great twist story, about a crashed plane and the man who takes charge to get everyone off before the plane slips off the edge of the snow-covered cliff.
  • Sideshow Champion — A brawling boxer gets the championship fight of his life, but he knows the ones backing the champion are all crooked and will stop at nothing to bring him down. And he knows he has to get out of the limelight to train, so he goes back to the circus as a sideshow boxer to practice for the weeks before the fight.
  • The Money Punch — Another boxing story about a kid who’s up against the rackets and an ex-trainer who is more than a little crooked. Add in a missing new trainer, and the fact that he needs training — he’s got a great right but his left needs to be developed so he can be a better fighter. Oh, and he wants the girl who owns the fight farm.
  • Roundup in Texas — A typical western story where cattle rustlers are lowering cattle estimates, and the foreman looks to be a chump who simply over-estimated. Gun battle at the end, and lots of story in a short timeframe.
  • Under the Hanging Wall — A private-eye story about a man hired to go to a town and find out why his brother would have killed a mine owner. The Sheriff is no help, and there’s a woman who belongs in the big city, not in a bus-stop town along the highway. Set in the early 20th century.

Other stories include: By the Waters of San Tadeo (town bully holds village hostage on island); Meeting at Falmouth (ambushing a traveling gentleman); and Beyond the Great Snow Mountains (woman taken prisoner in Chinese mountains by a tribe).

What I Didn’t Like

Two stories weren’t that great — Coast Patrol (WW II story about a freighter captured by Germans and an Allied pilot) and Gravel Pit (thief gets extorted and wants to kill the extortionist).

The Bottom Line

Decent but eclectic bunch of shortstories.