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Kate Henry Mystery #1
The Dead Pull Hitter
For a Goodreads introduction to the first volume of her baseball mystery series, who better than asking author Alison Gordon for a quote?
Here's how she presents her lead character. From page #10: "I’m Katherine Henry. My friends call me Kate. I am a baseball writer by trade. .. I’m forty, older than most of the Titans, including the manager. I’m tallish, prettyish, and a lot more interesting than most of the people I write about. I’m also good at [my job], to the active disappointment of some of my male colleagues, who have been waiting for me to fall on my face since the day I walked into my first spring training. .. I am also the only woman on the team plane who doesn’t serve drinks."
Kate has problems with the arrogance, ignorance, easy money and bigotry of the sports world. She also has impossible deadlines and puts in weeks of overtime. But it’s all in a baseball-season’s work. That is, until the designated hitter doesn’t show for a game; it seems that someone used his skull for batting practice. The homicide squad is called in, and Kate’s search for a scoop puts her at odds, and in pleasantly close contact with, the law.
As real life impinges on the world of baseball, Kate learns how naïve – and vulnerable – she really is.
Librarian's note: the characters, settings, book descriptions, etc. have all been done for the 5 volume series: #1. Dead Pull Hitter (1988), #2. Safe at Home (1990), #3. Night Game (1992), #4. Striking Out (1995), and #5. Prairie Hardball (1997). But, improvements are welcome.
Here's how she presents her lead character. From page #10: "I’m Katherine Henry. My friends call me Kate. I am a baseball writer by trade. .. I’m forty, older than most of the Titans, including the manager. I’m tallish, prettyish, and a lot more interesting than most of the people I write about. I’m also good at [my job], to the active disappointment of some of my male colleagues, who have been waiting for me to fall on my face since the day I walked into my first spring training. .. I am also the only woman on the team plane who doesn’t serve drinks."
Kate has problems with the arrogance, ignorance, easy money and bigotry of the sports world. She also has impossible deadlines and puts in weeks of overtime. But it’s all in a baseball-season’s work. That is, until the designated hitter doesn’t show for a game; it seems that someone used his skull for batting practice. The homicide squad is called in, and Kate’s search for a scoop puts her at odds, and in pleasantly close contact with, the law.
As real life impinges on the world of baseball, Kate learns how naïve – and vulnerable – she really is.
Librarian's note: the characters, settings, book descriptions, etc. have all been done for the 5 volume series: #1. Dead Pull Hitter (1988), #2. Safe at Home (1990), #3. Night Game (1992), #4. Striking Out (1995), and #5. Prairie Hardball (1997). But, improvements are welcome.
222 pages, Hardcover
First published April 23, 1988
7 people are currently reading
85 people want to read
About the author
Alison Gordon
14 books4 followersAlison Gordon was born in New York City. She spent her childhood in New York, Tokyo, Cairo and Rome because of her (Canadian) father's work with the United Nations. She attended Queen's University but left before completing her degree. Alison held various positions in television, radio and newspaper, including five years as a baseball writer for the Toronto Star (1979-1985). Foul Balls, her first book, details her experiences as the first woman to cover major league baseball. She has served on the boards of The Writers' Union, Crime Writers of Canada, PEN Canada, and the International Association of Crime Writers. She received the Citation of Merit for sports writing. She passed away in Toronto in 2015.
Series:
* Kate Henry Mystery
Series:
* Kate Henry Mystery
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
September 28, 2025
4 Stars. I enjoyed this one - a little light but it had large dollops of mystery, nostalgia, and baseball. Three things I enjoy. The author knows the game, having worked as a sports journalist for The Toronto Star covering the Blue Jays between 1979 and 1984. Two star players for the Toronto Titans die suddenly in the last few weeks of a winning season. The players are fictional, but the stadium, the opponent teams, and the city are real - read the CNE's Exhibition Stadium (the home of the Jays before Skydome / Rogers Centre), the Yankees and the Tigers, and my home town, Toronto. I hope your memory for names is better than mine; Ms. Gordon revels in introducing all 25 or so Titan players randomly, along with their confusing nicknames - to the consternation of this reader and my effort to strike out a killer. Gordon works the story through her delightful alter-ego, Kate Henry, baseball writer for the Toronto Planet. The victims? Sultan Sanchez is the team's designated hitter; at least he was until found beaten to death with a baseball bat. The other had the personality of a dead skunk. Before starting, I wasn't sure I'd read #2. Now I am. (Ap2024/Se2025)
June 6, 2018
Written in the 80s with little else to date it, we find Kate Henry in the unusual role of newspaper reporter covering the local Major League Baseball team, the Toronto Titans.
The Titans are in the pennant chase for a change, but as the chase comes to its end, a player is killed in what appears to be a robbery. A distinguished-looking but rather volatile detective takes charge, and Kate gets involved as both a reporter and someone affected by what comes next. More players become relevant, and their interactions become important in resolving things.
The baseball scenes rang true for this fan, the emotions and action caught well. The mystery was OK but the details for the reader to figure it out had to wait until very late when Kate's memory and observation skills came through based on new facts. The average rating of about 3.5 is where I'd put it, feeling it good enough to read the second book in my eBool bundle, but short of a four.
The Titans are in the pennant chase for a change, but as the chase comes to its end, a player is killed in what appears to be a robbery. A distinguished-looking but rather volatile detective takes charge, and Kate gets involved as both a reporter and someone affected by what comes next. More players become relevant, and their interactions become important in resolving things.
The baseball scenes rang true for this fan, the emotions and action caught well. The mystery was OK but the details for the reader to figure it out had to wait until very late when Kate's memory and observation skills came through based on new facts. The average rating of about 3.5 is where I'd put it, feeling it good enough to read the second book in my eBool bundle, but short of a four.
August 23, 2016
I really enjoyed this one. I usually have a small problem with baseball books that use a fictional name for a real team that is in a real city. Ms. Gordon did this calling the Toronto Blue Jays the Toronto Titans. I understand why this is done, but it is a small peeve of mine. Never the less I really enjoyed this one after the first few pages.
I just read Ms. Gordon's Wikipedia page and found that she was actually the first lady who covered a major league baseball team, the Toronto Blue Jays. This fact definitely gives her cred.
I was sorry to find that she had passed away a couple of years ago. This has been true of several authors that I found after their passing. This does not take away from my enjoyment of their stories, but it does mean I will have to read the ones available knowing that will be all there are.
I just read Ms. Gordon's Wikipedia page and found that she was actually the first lady who covered a major league baseball team, the Toronto Blue Jays. This fact definitely gives her cred.
I was sorry to find that she had passed away a couple of years ago. This has been true of several authors that I found after their passing. This does not take away from my enjoyment of their stories, but it does mean I will have to read the ones available knowing that will be all there are.
July 3, 2022
4.5 stars
What could be better? A mystery with a strong female amateur detective AND baseball? Not much.
Like the author, protagonist Kate Henry is a sports reporter covering that wonderful game. There's a great plot and super realism about both journalism and baseball. Alison Golden's background makes this her niche! Golden was a Canadian journalist and writer who was the first woman on the baseball beat in the Major Leagues. She was a trailblazer in the field of sports journalism, covering the Toronto Blue Jays for the Toronto Star for five years. Sadly, Golden died in 2015, leaving behind only five titles in the Kate Henry series. I shall have to space them out and savour them.
I had a wonderful time reading The Dead Pull Hitter and even learned a couple of things I didn't know about the game.
What could be better? A mystery with a strong female amateur detective AND baseball? Not much.
Like the author, protagonist Kate Henry is a sports reporter covering that wonderful game. There's a great plot and super realism about both journalism and baseball. Alison Golden's background makes this her niche! Golden was a Canadian journalist and writer who was the first woman on the baseball beat in the Major Leagues. She was a trailblazer in the field of sports journalism, covering the Toronto Blue Jays for the Toronto Star for five years. Sadly, Golden died in 2015, leaving behind only five titles in the Kate Henry series. I shall have to space them out and savour them.
I had a wonderful time reading The Dead Pull Hitter and even learned a couple of things I didn't know about the game.
March 2, 2015
Great fun, neat if you know something about baseball, especially the Blue Jays who are clearly who the Toronto Titans are based upon. Fun, catchy, humorous. Written by Alison Gordon who was an actual sportswriter for the Blue Jays in the early 80s.
April 16, 2009
It's baseball. It's a mystery. It has a charming feisty female reporter as the main character. Fun stuff.
March 22, 2015
This was a fun book if you love baseball the way I do. Not too gruesome either. Quite timeless considering it's almost thirty years old.
November 23, 2021
Seeing the book with its delightful pun of a title on the shelf, I couldn’t resist picking up The Dead Pull Hitter. As I flipped through the pages, I noticed what one blurb on the cover had indicated, some detailed play-by-play narratives. Now, as a guy who devoured the sports books for boys by John R. Tunis and Jackson Sholtz when I was in elementary school, I’m a sucker for those books that put you in the action. The closest book to this that I’ve read recently (in the last three years, anyway) was Peter Schilling Jr.’s The End of Baseball and Troy Soos’ Hunting a Detroit Tiger and Hanging Curve. A few years before that, it was a free ebook version of Zane Grey’s The Young Pitcher, John Grisham’s Calico Joe and Troy Soos’ Murder at Wrigley Field. So, I guess you could say that I was due for a book like this and Allison Gordon delivered with her descriptions of the on-field and off-field trials and tribulations of the fictitious Toronto Titans major league team. And the bonus was that everyone in the book hated the Yankees, just like me. Indeed, one minor character is a beat writer for the Yankees described as managing: “…to cover the Yankees without becoming self-important, a rare feat.” (p. 229)
Although I’m sure the traditional disclaimer about “no persons living or dead” is appropriate here, Ms. Gordon does a wonderful job of parlaying her experiences in reporting for The Toronto Star into an intriguing murder mystery with lots of human interest. Clubhouse intrigue, pennant race tension, on-field drama, and off-field murder keeps one turning pages. It’s one of those mysteries you read in a day, and that’s just the right pace. And, perhaps because of the journalistic background of the protagonist (a female sports reporter much like Ms. Gordon), it doesn’t feel like the typical detective story. She keeps picking up little clues while doing her job (as well as through one moment of serendipitous charity) and, in general, she cooperates with the police (okay, the charming, divorced homicide inspector who comes close to turning this sports mystery into a “cozy” even though the bulk of the book doesn’t feel like a “cozy” does call her a “Nancy Drew” at point). I like the fact that she isn’t deliberately trying to schuss out the murderer; she’s just caught in the middle. She wants to cooperate with the police, but she needs to protect her sources. It’s an interesting conundrum and it adds to the punch of the story.
Some of the nice detail in the novel had to do with the way the team’s public relations strategy dealt with death. The approach of wearing black armbands and playing on in “their memory” rang true. We’ve seen it often enough in real life. There is a big memorial service at the stadium that afforded Gordon the chance to write the priest’s eulogy recounting: “…their virtues sounded more like a scouting report than a eulogy.” (p. 205). Oh, as long as I quoted that line, I should note that plenty of lines—not necessarily integral to the story—increased my risibility index. In one exchange about a young constable, only a few pages after some observations on aging, I snorted aloud when I read: “Earnest? He’s an escapee from Leave It to Beaver.” To which the response was, “Except he’s too young to have heard of it.” This is followed by, “He’s too young to have heard of the Beatles!” (pp. 222-223) Oh, my! Have I been there!
The murderer (or murderers—I wouldn’t want to spoil it) was (were) pretty obvious to me from early on. Gordon provided some nice red herrings and even some physical evidence to support them, but the perpetrator (perpetrators) just kept popping into my mind as I read the book. As a result, I was very satisfied with the way it came out. It was tied up neater than the string on a baseball glove that plays a role in this mystery. The Dead Pull Hitter was just the right mix of baseball and light mystery that I enjoy reading.
Although I’m sure the traditional disclaimer about “no persons living or dead” is appropriate here, Ms. Gordon does a wonderful job of parlaying her experiences in reporting for The Toronto Star into an intriguing murder mystery with lots of human interest. Clubhouse intrigue, pennant race tension, on-field drama, and off-field murder keeps one turning pages. It’s one of those mysteries you read in a day, and that’s just the right pace. And, perhaps because of the journalistic background of the protagonist (a female sports reporter much like Ms. Gordon), it doesn’t feel like the typical detective story. She keeps picking up little clues while doing her job (as well as through one moment of serendipitous charity) and, in general, she cooperates with the police (okay, the charming, divorced homicide inspector who comes close to turning this sports mystery into a “cozy” even though the bulk of the book doesn’t feel like a “cozy” does call her a “Nancy Drew” at point). I like the fact that she isn’t deliberately trying to schuss out the murderer; she’s just caught in the middle. She wants to cooperate with the police, but she needs to protect her sources. It’s an interesting conundrum and it adds to the punch of the story.
Some of the nice detail in the novel had to do with the way the team’s public relations strategy dealt with death. The approach of wearing black armbands and playing on in “their memory” rang true. We’ve seen it often enough in real life. There is a big memorial service at the stadium that afforded Gordon the chance to write the priest’s eulogy recounting: “…their virtues sounded more like a scouting report than a eulogy.” (p. 205). Oh, as long as I quoted that line, I should note that plenty of lines—not necessarily integral to the story—increased my risibility index. In one exchange about a young constable, only a few pages after some observations on aging, I snorted aloud when I read: “Earnest? He’s an escapee from Leave It to Beaver.” To which the response was, “Except he’s too young to have heard of it.” This is followed by, “He’s too young to have heard of the Beatles!” (pp. 222-223) Oh, my! Have I been there!
The murderer (or murderers—I wouldn’t want to spoil it) was (were) pretty obvious to me from early on. Gordon provided some nice red herrings and even some physical evidence to support them, but the perpetrator (perpetrators) just kept popping into my mind as I read the book. As a result, I was very satisfied with the way it came out. It was tied up neater than the string on a baseball glove that plays a role in this mystery. The Dead Pull Hitter was just the right mix of baseball and light mystery that I enjoy reading.
March 25, 2016
BOTTOM-LINE:
Nice start to the series
.
PLOT OR PREMISE:
Dead Pull Hitter feels like it picks up where Gordon's non-fiction left off: the Toronto Titans have finished in fourth place the previous year and are starting to pull it together for a pennant race; the protagonist Kate Henry is a woman sportswriter who's covered them for five years; she works for the Toronto Planet which is sandwiched in the news market between the stodgy World and the bimbette-littered pages of the Mirror. At times it was hard to remind myself that this was the fiction category!
.
WHAT I LIKED:
The fun doesn't really take off until after the first body arrives. Up until then, it is basically a baseball story. After that, the murder mystery takes hold. The clues are there for the finding: some obvious, others more subtle. Nicely written, and combines the baseball / mystery storylines with an appropriate emphasis on the mystery. And the cop-as-a-romantic-partner-and-mystery-antagonist-theme is alive and well in the book.
.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:
The start on the baseball story gives you a fairly large cast of characters that may be easy for a baseball fan to keep straight (i.e. player X is a catcher), but the names all seemed to run together for me. The baseball players also seem to have an enormously large and direct role in Kate's life, which doesn't seem to fit with her being a member of the objective sports press that covers them regularly.
.
DISCLOSURE:
I received no compensation, not even a free copy, in exchange for this review. I was not personal friends with the author, but I did interact with her online.
Nice start to the series
.
PLOT OR PREMISE:
Dead Pull Hitter feels like it picks up where Gordon's non-fiction left off: the Toronto Titans have finished in fourth place the previous year and are starting to pull it together for a pennant race; the protagonist Kate Henry is a woman sportswriter who's covered them for five years; she works for the Toronto Planet which is sandwiched in the news market between the stodgy World and the bimbette-littered pages of the Mirror. At times it was hard to remind myself that this was the fiction category!
.
WHAT I LIKED:
The fun doesn't really take off until after the first body arrives. Up until then, it is basically a baseball story. After that, the murder mystery takes hold. The clues are there for the finding: some obvious, others more subtle. Nicely written, and combines the baseball / mystery storylines with an appropriate emphasis on the mystery. And the cop-as-a-romantic-partner-and-mystery-antagonist-theme is alive and well in the book.
.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:
The start on the baseball story gives you a fairly large cast of characters that may be easy for a baseball fan to keep straight (i.e. player X is a catcher), but the names all seemed to run together for me. The baseball players also seem to have an enormously large and direct role in Kate's life, which doesn't seem to fit with her being a member of the objective sports press that covers them regularly.
.
DISCLOSURE:
I received no compensation, not even a free copy, in exchange for this review. I was not personal friends with the author, but I did interact with her online.
December 21, 2021
Kate Henry is a sports reporter for a Toronto newspaper and her beat is the Toronto Titians, a major league baseball team. When pitchers start dropping dead of unnatural causes, her beat turns into homicide. I have to admit that I've read better mysteries but I've rarely read a novel by a writer who knows more about professional baseball. As a baseball fan, this book was a joy. I already have her others on my 'to read' pile.
April 19, 2022
Gordon, a former baseball writer for the Jays, debut novel covering the Toronto “Majors” of the MLB and a murder amongst the team. There’s good writing in here, a relatable main character and realistic team of ball players, but the novel doesn’t quite feel fleshed out. Coming in under 200 pages, it’s more a short story/proof of concept than a full fledged novel. I’ve got some of her later work on the shelf and looking forward to seeing if she can build on this one.
August 17, 2016
This is a fun read, particularly if you are baseball fan. Kate Henry is a sports writer covering the Toronto Titans who are going to the playoffs for the first time in years. All is well until one of the players is murdered. Kate uses her investigative journalist skills to help solve the murder--until she comes to the murderer's attention and may be the next victim.
March 16, 2015
Written by one of the first female sports writers. Fair plot, with lots of baseball details (which will interest fans, and can be easily skipped by the non-fan). First in the Kate Henry series of 5 books.
June 17, 2020
I love baseball and the journalism side was really interesting. There were some good jokes in there and this time around, I understood the reference to Ernie Banks having recently read the book about him and his "let's play two" catchphrase.
Read
March 12, 20112 pennant winning players murdered at clinching
July 7, 2015
Very Good; Continuing character: Kate Henry (first in series); woman sportswriter for Toronto baseball team helps solve the mystery when two of the players are killed
July 14, 2016
A mystery with a baseball setting, written by a pioneer woman sportswriter. Right up my alley, nicely written, and funny. A winner.
July 13, 2018
Quick easy read. Entertaining, especially if you're a baseball fan. Decent whodunit.
May 25, 2020
Starts slow, but then..
Took a long time to get into this author's style. But was a worthwhile read for a baseball, murder mystery fan.
Took a long time to get into this author's style. But was a worthwhile read for a baseball, murder mystery fan.
January 21, 2021
Copyright 1988 evident from slower pace. I -liked- that.
February 28, 2020
First mystery by Alison Gordon and a good one. Really liked the way she introduced her characters and gave the book a cozy feel. Also enjoyed that not all characters were likeable. Didn’t love the ending, but still really enjoyed the book and the setting (Toronto, ballpark).
June 15, 2012
Great traditional mystery for baseball fans!
July 29, 2016
A good mystery and good baseball book. After reading her book on her time as beat writer for the Blue Jays you can see the relationship the the real big league team.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews