Sore Loser: A Mickey Donovan Mystery

Bedecked with humor, shiv-sharp dialogue and a surfeit of urban lore, this surreal fiction debut from New York Daily News columnist McAlary (Good Cop, Bad Cop) crackles from the first page. NYPD inspector Mickey Donovan, aka ""The Wraith,"" walks the city streets trying to find his junkie daughter, Dillon. Professional tennis player Ginny Glade gets a bad line call in a tournament final and beans the umpire in a parking lot with a tire iron. A seemingly random gunshot fired from a passing train kills a female baseball umpire, and Ginny's murderous feelings escalate when her ex-husband hits an unlikely home run during a World Series game. Then another bad call leads to another uniformed stiff. While Ginny seems a good suspect for one or more of the killings, she soon becomes an unlikely mother figure for Dillon, who's driving Donovan to distraction. Umpires keep on dying and an endlessly scheming mayor calls for an arrest. Worse, professional sports lose some of their luster as fearful referees and umpires hesitate to make the good call, settling instead for the safe one. Meanwhile, Mickey falls for Ginny and she responds in kind--but she has also drawn the attention of a murderer. McAlary favors a style somewhere between Jimmy Breslin and veteran crime writer Jerome Charyn, allowing him to seem at once wonderfully well-informed and spectacularly inventive. His dialogue is slick and assured and he takes chances seldom seen in a debut mystery, launching a series to watch and, hopefully, to cherish. (Nov.)