Sports reporter Kate Green is
back in her third adventure. Close Call (Thomas & Mercer, 19 August
2025) by Elise Hart Kipness takes Kate to the US Open Tennis Championships,
i.e., the US Open, where a major competition is brewing. Lucy Bosco, seasoned but
volatile tennis pro who has won almost every major award possible and who is
rumored to be considering retirement, is playing against Brynn Cole,
up-and-coming young tennis prodigy, in a match that is getting huge amounts of press
attention. Kate has scored exclusive interviews with both of the players,
despite the gatekeepers for each of them reluctant to grant access.
After Kate and Lucy visit Lucy’s
hometown where she first began training as a tennis pro and they meet her first
coach and some of her high school friends, Lucy disappears. Her coach receives
a note saying she is resigning from the championships for personal reasons. A
photo showing her battered face and chains around her wrists appears on Brynn’s
telephone, demanding $2 million dollars in ransom. The police scramble to find
her and to identify anyone who might want to hurt Lucy, while both families try
to raise the ransom and squelch rumors. Kate has some ideas of her own, based
on the time she spent with Lucy and the people they met, and shares them with
her law enforcement father.
Kidnapping someone important
just before a crucial competition is a great plot device. Harlan Coben used it
in Back Spin (1997), his fourth book about sports agent Myron Bolitar;
Kipness adds some original twists to the idea here. As in her earlier books,
Kipness’s experience as a sports reporter gives a degree of depth and
authenticity to the story that cannot be acquired any other way. Kipness has a
good feel for characterization; Bill the cameraman, Kate’s ever-present
companion, is a great working partner and a solid friend.
I hope that this series
continues; professional and college sports are rife with potential for criminal
activity, yet there are relatively few crime fiction books written about it. Harlan
Coben has resurrected his Myron Bolitar character after an eight-year hiatus,
and Robert B. Parker based several of his Spenser books in one sport or
another. Dick Francis of course looked at horse racing in detail. The closest I
have found to these books about a sports reporter by a sports reporter are the
Kate Henry series by Canadian sports writer and mystery author Alison Gordon,
whose journalist Kate Henry covered the Canadian Blue Jays.
Nicely plotted and briskly told. A good read.
·
Publisher:
Thomas & Mercer
·
Publication
date: August
19, 2025
·
Language:
English
·
Print
length: 270 pages
·
ISBN-10:
166252787X
· ISBN-13: 978-1662527876
Amazon Associate Purchase
Link: https://amzn.to/4mv5Qad
Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2025
Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.
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