Book Review: Fourth Down

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Fourth Down     Amazon US HC Amazon Canada HC
Dave Klein
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Sports
Forge, Sept 1999, $23.95, 255 pp.

In 1968, the country’s leading high school quarterback Adam Benson left Pennsylvania to play football at Oklahoma University. In that same year, Ed Buck left New York City without a scholarship with the dream of being a walk-on playing on the offensive line at OU. In 1972, the Bears draft Adam and Ed, but the lineman ripped up his knee in the now defunct college all star game, ending a promising career before it began. Adam started a great pro career while Ed became a sports writer for the New York Express.

A dozen years later, Adam is having his worst season ever. He talks with his pal Ed, informing the journalist that his cocaine habit led him to borrow money from the wrong people. He has been throwing football games, but has had it. Adam plans to play at his best against the Giants. However, during the game, Adam dies from an apparent heart attack. Ed thinks a gambling syndicate killed his friend. Though he places his life on the line, the intrepid reporter only knows one way to go and that is right up the middle.

FOURTH DOWN is a touchdown winning sports mystery that fans of the sub-genre will relish. The sports segments and the related gambling sub-plot are superbly written, enticing sport and non-sport fans to read more novels by Dave Klein. Though the mob sequences seem pale by comparison, they do not slow down the frantic pace of a story line that reads more like a two minute drill. With this novel and BLINDSIDE, Mr. Klein is deserving of the writers equivalent to the “Lombardi Trophy” for authors of excellent sports mysteries.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner