Parker Combines His Passions in Double Play
By Susan Reader July 1, 2004 Issue

Anyone who has read any of the plentiful Spencer series by Robert B. Parker knows two things: Parker is a master of the crime fiction genre and he loves baseball. In Double Play, he skillfully and imaginatively combines the two.

Set in 1947, the year Jackie Robinson integrated baseball, Parker serves up a fictional bodyguard to keep the newest Brooklyn Dodger from harm in an America still very segregated. Wither Robinson goes, so goes Joseph Burke. Burke has been so emotionally damaged by World War II, and the end of his marriage, he makes the perfect bodyguard. He professes to care about nothing, but nevertheless is determined to do the job for which he is being paid.

After a stint as a boxer, Burke temporarily becomes a collector for a shylock who knows he can’t control his enforcer and steers him into the business of being a bodyguard, and he is ultimately hired by the general manager of the Dodgers to look after Robinson.

Burke’s association with Robinson changes both of them, as Burke sees the quiet strength and determination of one man to reach his destiny—whatever the hurdles. And Robinson can do it with the love and support of his wife. At one point Robinson says he and his wife think with one mind, so each can speak for the other. This concept of concrete togetherness is new to Burke, but he recognizes his yearning for it anyway.

As in most Parker novels, there is a roster of bad guys, some after Robinson and some after Burke. Throw in a rich, spoiled, sexually troubled but beautiful girl, and you have the makings of a good yarn peopled with good characters.

Parker sprinkles the story with memories of his own youth and he and his father’s support of the Brooklyn Dodgers, even though they live in the suburbs of Boston. His own memories are evocative of the period and as Burke, he describes the scenes and the people who inhabited Ebbets Field during the home games.

Along the way we get discourses on racial understanding, the sparkling repartee Parker does so well and a great deal of Brooklyn Dodger baseball history. You don’t have to be a baseball fan to enjoy this book. As with most of Parker’s book, the reader is sucked in early and holds on for the ride.

Double Play, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 288 pages and available at local and online booksellers and local libraries.

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