Created by Michael Geller
(1947–)
Former shortstop “SLOTS” RESNICK never quite made it to the Show–the furthest he ever got was a farm club. His career as a NYPD homicide dick grounded out as well, so he makes do as a private eye, in this baseball-themed trilogy by sportswriter Geller.
Slots is affable enough, a half-Jewish, half-Irish gent who generally tries to get  along with everyone and remains on good terms with most of the guys he used to play with (in one book, he’s even hired by the Mets). He even gets along with his slightly irksome girlfriend, but the books themselves never quite bat it out of the park–they’re entertaining enough, but hardly major league, none of them even making it to paperback.
As far as I know, Michael Geller was (possibly) a sportswriter, and certainly a novelist. He’s credited with writing a couple of other mystery series, one featuring New York cop Bud Dugan, and another following the adventures of crime-solving jockey Ken Eagle.
Hmmm… for some reason Geller’s books keep popping up on some of fellow P.I. writer Robert J. Ray‘s Amazon pages, and vice versa. Given they were contemporaries and seem to have often received the same sort of decidedly mixed (and in Geller’s case, baseball-themed) reviews, it gets a guy wondering…
UNDER OATH
- “While the baseball sequences are competently done, the remainder of the story is strictly bush-league.”
— Publishers Weekly on Major League Murder - “Plodding P.I. novel, from an author whose paperback career proved one thing: cliches make a poor substitute for imagination… If you enjoy being two steps ahead of the author all the way through, this book is for you.”
— Kirkus Reviews - “…as derivative and underachieving, and deserves no more than to ride the bench behind the first-string baseball mysteries.Â
— The Washington Post on Major League Murder
NOVELS
- Heroes Also Die (1988)Â |Â Buy this bookÂ
- Major League Murder (1988)Â |Â Buy this book
- Three Strikes, You’re Dead (1992) | Buy this book
