All the Dead Heroes: A T.S.W. Sheridan Mystery

Following The St. Lawrence Run, the latest T.S.W. Sheridan mystery finds the freelance crime reporter from upstate New York investigating the stormy career and murder of a retired ballplayer. Sheridan, an example of how the '80s and '90s man with heightened sensitivity has been inserted into the hard-boiled crime novel, sticks with the story of the reclusive second baseman, who was his childhood hero, determined to rehabilitate the man's tarnished reputation, even posthumously. Frank Wooley was banned from baseball for consorting with a known gambler, then reinstated. Finally elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, Wooley is thrust back into the public eye long enough to commit an apparent murder-suicide, with a sleazy sportswriter as his victim. Wilcox writes knowingly about the freelance life, but his tale suffers from repartee that is more forced than funny and a complicated plot that too often doubles back on itself. Moreover, Sheridan, with his messy, irresolute love life, is too passive a protagonist to sustain interest--his case is solved by a secondary character at the book's climax, and his story is too often advanced by legmen, which is a disappointing touch, however realistic. (May)