Review of
Five O’clock Lightning,
by William L. DeAndrea
Five out of five stars
A murder story with much more
This novel is
set in the early nineteen fifties at the height of the red scare in the United
States. It features steamy sex for profit, murder, New York Yankees baseball,
self-serving politicians that wave the red menace at anything that will sit
still long enough, racism, and careers destroyed from accusations of being
pro-communist.
Russ Garrett
was once a top prospect in the New York Yankees farm system until he was
drafted, sent to Korea and suffered severe leg wounds. While he can walk and
even run, it is becoming clear that he will never return to a form that will
get him back playing baseball. He is now working in the office of the Commissioner
of baseball concentrating on veteran’s affairs. His deceased former girlfriend
is the sister to the wife of a man whose career as a professor was destroyed by
allegations that he was a communist.
When a member
of Congress that is prominent in the communist hysteria is killed in Yankee
Stadium during a game, the hunt is on for the killer, and Garrett is part of
the hunt. The murder is committed in full view of the reader, so there is never
any doubt as to who did it. The main issues become how the killer managed to
get away from the police and the relationships between the main characters. Yankee
great Mickey Mantle is featured, and he is portrayed as he was in the early
fifties, a young man from small town Oklahoma that is overwhelmed by life in
New York City.
There are many
different threads weaved within this story, yet the underlying plot device is
based on how the manufactured hysteria over the communist menace in the early
fifties was a cancer on the body politic of the United States. The ability of
self-serving politicians to create such events is a clear weakness of the
American political system that is still in evidence today.
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