The Sinners' League: A Gun Pedersen Mystery

Gun Pedersen, former baseball player now living in the Minnesota north woods, is painted as a rugged individualist caught up in the tangle of another hard-luck story in his fifth outing (Comeback was an Edgar-nominee). His second wife, Carol, a journalist, researches an article on prostitution at the local Native American-owned casino. An old flame of Gun's comes to town to write a screenplay based on a legal thriller written by a local lawyer; Gun agrees to see her, but, guilt-stricken, stands her up. The next morning he learns that she was raped and killed in a stolen cab. Carol brings a teenage hooker to the Pederson spread for sanctuary, but the girl drowns, perhaps on purpose. On the trail of his old friend's killer, Gun hooks into the prostitution ring being run through the casino. Enger's prose, moving from workmanlike to pretentious, gives Gun more sorrow and pain than one character, no matter how rugged, should have to bear, straining reader credibility in the process. (Oct.)