Gravetapping: Booked (and Printed): July 2025

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Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Close Call by Elise Hart Kipness

 

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.

Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Dangerous Play by Elise Hart Kipness

After reading the second rip-roaring mystery about sports reporter Kate Green, I would have known without being told that author Elise Hart Kipness was a former sports reporter herself. The book is overflowing with the authentic detail available only to the subject matter expert. Some of the very best parts describe the pressure of live reporting from a dynamic scene while simultaneously coordinating with producers and technical staff back at the broadcasting station. These sections will give readers a new appreciation for live action reporters, who make what they are doing look easy.

The book tells two stories, one about Kate Green the budding soccer star who helped bring an Olympic gold medal home years ago, and the second about an older Kate Green who moved on from the game and turned her experience into a live network sports reporting career. The first thread describes the grueling training Olympic hopefuls and their families endure, and the cutthroat competition among the players for a few coveted places on the final team.

The second thread takes place in the present during the Olympics summer games being hosted in New York, where Kate gets the on-air reporting assignment because the coach of the U.S. soccer team is one of her former Olympics team mates and Kate’s management assumes she will be able to capitalize on the relationship to gain access to the team and exclusive material.

One of the U.S. soccer players is displaying shockingly poor sportsmanship and creating a disruptive locker room, and the media’s focus is on her antics until the body of a former Olympic hopeful from Kate’s playing days is found in the medical treatment area underneath Madison Square Gardens. Both Kate and the U.S. soccer team coach knew the victim well at one point in their lives, and naturally the police assume they had something to do with the death. Not unnaturally Kate decides to investigate on her own.

Kate’s father, who had chosen his law enforcement career over his marriage when Kate’s mother gave him an ultimatum, is active in the investigation and he is Kate’s source for forensic information. So often in amateur sleuth mysteries the nonprofessional relies on a police boyfriend, a device that has been overused, so supplying a parent as an inside source is a refreshing change.

Another good bit is the incident involving the release of false information. While it was pulled within the hour, the release was so deliberately sensational that it spread like wildfire across the Internet and did some damage. Some pointed comments about the media’s responsibility in stopping misinformation instead of chasing ratings were completely on target.

I realized about two-thirds through what the motive for the killing was, which pointed at an obvious culprit but other readers may well not be as jaded as I am. Even so, the strength of this very good mystery is in the portrayal of the cutthroat world of Olympic sports and the similarly vicious ecosphere of network media.

 

·       Publisher: ‎Thomas & Mercer (September 17, 2024)

·       Language: ‎English

·       Paperback: ‎285 pages

·       ISBN-10: ‎1662512686

·       ISBN-13: ‎978-1662512681 

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3X7JUqK 

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2024 

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.