Caught in a Rundown: A Novel Introducing Jewel Averick and Dee Sweet

Two dissimilar baseball wives play hardball with the thugs who are out to get them in this female buddy caper. Jewel Averick, black, self-absorbed and devious, is outraged when her husband, the star center fielder of the Washington Diamonds, spends $15,000 to purchase the glove of ""Two Mile"" McLemore, a legendary player in the Negro Leagues who mysteriously disappeared in 1939. But her anger is replaced by a wary curiosity when she finds a cryptic message, maybe written by the missing player, inside the glove. Determined to follow the note's clues, she enlists the aid of mousy and browbeaten Dee Sweet (wife of the Diamonds' second baseman), who desperately needs a respite from her overbearing husband and three demanding children. The women, emboldened by their decision to follow what seems to be a scavenger hunt, have scarcely deciphered the first clue when they realize that they are being followed by two hulking but inept thugs who seem to be after them and the clues. The comic chase leads up and down the East coast, from retirement home to ballpark to cemetery, with an array of amusing antics that illuminate baseball's lesser-known history. Featuring two mettlesome ladies backed up by an eager and talented bench of co-players, this energetic tale, while formulaic, keeps its secrets well and is a promising debut for Saxton. (Aug.)