I love the nicknames in this book, especially the men’s, and
they make it easy to keep up with who’s who.
(Most of the women are Sister Somebody, and I could not keep them
straight at all.) Sportcoat. living in
the projects in Brooklyn and still talking to the ghost of his wife who died a
year ago, is a good-hearted drunk. He
makes a living doing odd jobs and has a marvelous green thumb. However, when he shoots off the ear of the
19-year-old Deems, drug dealer and former star pitcher for the neighborhood
baseball team, Sportcoat finds himself in the crosshairs of both the police and
the drug kingpin. Fortunately, he leads a
somewhat charmed life, in denial about having shot Deems and about needing to
lie low, and one particular pursuer keeps running into mayhem. The author presents lots of opportunities for
romance and redemption in this novel and does not disappoint, although several
loose ends are never tied up. One of the
prevailing themes here is a sense of honor that governs even the lives of
people like the Elephant, who deals in stolen goods. Romance springs up in unlikely places, and,
in the redemption department, Sportcoat believes that Deems’s salvation lies in
his return to baseball. Of course,
Sportcoat has his own problems, not the least of which is his drinking problem. The characters, plot, and writing style of
this novel are all terrific, but occasionally the pace slows to a crawl.
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