New here 09.30.02 - Published March '97

A few years ago, someone suggested that mystery novels written by L.L. Enger about a retired baseball player were worth reading.

One Saturday afternoon recently, I was spending time at the Northfield library with David and had read my fill of newspapers and magazines.

A purple cover caught my eye on one of those spinning displays of paperbacks. It was Strike, A Gun Pedersen Mystery by L.L. Enger, L.L. Enger is, by the way, the pen name of Leif and his brother. (See Peace Like a River by Leif Enger.)

David wasn't ready to go home, so I sat down and started reading it.

Easy to get into, intriguing enough to keep me interested. I checked it out before we went home.

On another January day when I was spending time at home with David because our wonderful governor ordered schools to close because of the cold, I finished the book.

I really liked it.

Minnesota native Gun (short for Gunnar, probably) Pedersen retired after his successful career
with the Detroit Tigers to his cabin up north (see Fargo, the movie or Howard Mohr's How to Speak Minnesotan
if you need an explanation of "up north"). A retired guy near a small town, he had time to get
involved in mysterious happenings (like that Jessica woman on TV who lived in New England's deadliest town).

The characters in Strike are worth getting to know--the potter who lives down the road,
the woman who runs the weekly newspaper, the county sheriff, the lodge owner who has
a barn doubling as a batting cage (where Babe Ruth once swatted indoor flies), and some
Native Americans who live on the nearby reservation. And there's the geologist who's
checking old core samples for minerals that might have been overlooked a few decades ago.

The story revolves around these characters and a couple of grisly murders (of course)
and there are some real sub-plots. Enough to keep me going. And enough to keep me
liking it; partly it's a special pleasure reading about the familiar landscape of northern
Minnesota, partly it was the characters, partly the story. Next time I get to the library, I might
go looking for other of Enger's books (Comeback and Swing) If you get to them before
I do, let us know how you react.

A bio of Gun Pedersen from the Thrilling Detective Web site.