Drover - Hardcover

Chicago Tribune columnist Granger gives his November Man thriller series a rest in order to write about a defrocked sportswriter investigating some mysteriously heavy betting against a heavily favored team. The hook for Jimmy Drover is the chance to take revenge on Slim Dingo, the loathsome gambler who drove Drover's ex- girlfriend's husband to suicide. Mobster Tony Rolls dangles the hook. Mr. Rolls will help Drover demolish Dingo if Drover will do something about the entrepreneurs at the Chicago Board of Trade- -their trading in sports-score futures may be about to cut into the mob's well-established preeminence in the sports gambling profession. Drover, still kind of sweet on Nancy Harrington, the new widow, takes the job and takes Slim Dingo for all the money he took from Nancy's late husband--and then he goes to work on the yuppie bookie business. He finds that the LaSalle Street money is betting against the powerful Denver Broncos for their upcoming game against the pitiful New Orleans Saints. Drover smells a setup that will take Lenny Gascon, the Broncos' superstud superstar quarterback, out of the game on a drug charge. Drover has to figure out not only who is doing the deed but how it will be done, since the monstrously narcissistic Gascon wouldn't dream of endangering his perfect body with an unnatural substance. A very, very angry Slim Dingo follows Drover's investigation with great interest. An almost impenetrably hard-boiled beginning turns into a more readable private-sports investigation with some nice moves. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Hampered by cliches, the hammering rhythms of simple staccato sentences and a trite plot, Granger's series launch doesn't match up to his November Man books. Former Chicago sports reporter Jimmy Drover, fired for alleged gangland connections, is approached by mobster Tony Rolls to check out a betting pool that may be operating out of the Chicago Commodities Exchange and could threaten Rolls's own operation. The gangster arranges a poker game in which Drover fleeces Slim Dingo, the arch-enemy of Drover's lady-love, Nancy. Dingo retaliates by beating and raping Nancy, and stealing the money won from him. Nancy flees to Drover's Santa Cruz, Calif., home where his pal, bartender Black Kelly, nurses her back to health, while Drover looks for the mastermind behind the betting pool. The action is slowed by repetitious explanations of sports betting, commodities trading and mob dictums; Drover, depicted as a semi-sentimental tough guy, is a cardboard hero. Little excitement here.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.