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4th & Fixed
Reggie Rivers. Sourcebooks: 2004 (hardcover). ISBN: 1402202199. 368 pages.
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Our GBL sports expert David Moore complains that sportswriter Frank Deford "has already stolen" the best single line to describe this novel - "a terrific insider tale of football skullduggery." In this first novel by former Denver Broncos fullback Reggie Rivers, we have the dubious pleasure of meeting with Jonathon Kinneson, the not-quite-as-rich-as-he-claims-to-be new owner of the San Antonio Stallions, a very mediocre NFL team. Just as Kinneson discovers he's in serious trouble and needs to sell his team for a healthy profit, the seriously clever wiseguy Michael Gasca show up uninvited to lead the Stallions to the Superbowl. With the help of his lifetime partner Roscoe Evans, a 320-pound enforcer of considerable persuasive talents, Gasca uses both mind and muscle to fix games with such subtle flair that nobody, or almost nobody, gets suspicious. The first notable exception is the Stallions otherworldly football genius Trevor Deale, a brilliant quarterback who can read a defense in the blink of a center's snap. But Trevor's got his hands full with his gorgeously bitchy and possessive girlfriend Vanessa, a smokin' redhead who's determined to direct Trevor's off-the-field life down to the smallest palatial mansion. The second exception is Steve Oquist, an special agent charged with keeping the grubby greedy hands of the mob and illegal gambling off the sanctity of NFL Sundays.
As any football fan could tell you, sometimes a very small nudge one way or the other - a fumble inside the twenty, a wide receiver fighting off the runs - can create a drastic shift in a game's momentum, can flip the switch on anticipated odds for victory. Reggie Rivers' story of blackmail, scandal, game-fixing, and the murky underworld surrounding professional football has the frighteningly plausible feel of inside knowledge. It's all fiction, of course, yet it's eerily convincing. The football purist may find it shocking, but you've got to admit that it's not such a stretch to imagine such manipulation taking place in real life. Bursting with clever characters, snappy dialogue, and fast-paced action, this book would be a great gift for the football fan in your life, even if he or she isn't typically a big reader.
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