The Babe Ruth Deception (A Fraser and Cook Historical Mystery, Book 3)

David O. Stewart

Oct 2020 · ePublishing Works!

About this ebook

A Country Doctor and Ex-Ballplayer Save "The Bambino" from Thugs, the Baseball Commissioner, and Himself in the Historical Fiction Novel, The Babe Ruth Conspiracy, from Author David O. Stewart

--New York City, 1920-21--

In 1920, Babe Ruth--larger than life on the ball field and off--is enjoying a record-breaking season in his first year as a New York Yankee when his 1918 World Series win falls under suspicion of being "fixed."

Then rumors start that his silent movie, Headin' Home, was bankrolled by the top aide to gambling kingpin, Arnold Rothstein.

Ruth turns to Speed Cook--a professional ballplayer before the game was segregated and who now promotes Negro baseball--for help. If anyone knows the dirty underbelly of America's favorite pastime, it's Cook.

Cook enlists the help of a long-time friend, Dr. Jamie Fraser, whose new wife, Eliza, coproduced the Babe's silent film.

While Cook, Fraser, and Eliza dig for the truth, protecting the oftentimes-reckless Ruth from thugs and the new baseball commissioner proves even more dangerous when they come face-to-face with hidden power-hitters who are playing for keeps.

Publisher's Note: The Fraser and Cook Historical Mystery Series will be enjoyed by fans of American history and period mystery novels. Free of graphic sex and with some mild profanity, this series can be enjoyed by readers of all ages.

"Within these pages, he ushers us into the randy, gritty, wanton world of Babe Ruth, just arrived in New York from Boston, where he would power the Yankees—hell, the whole damn city—for the next decade. It is a world filled with molls and toughs, crooked pols and bootleggers, gamblers and righteous cops, not to mention Stewart’s beloved characters, Speed Cook, the wise head and former Negro Leaguer, and Dr. Jamie Fraser, who have teamed up before in previous fictions.

The texture of the city is rendered with precision and believability. When Stewart describes the new impediment at the corner of 42nd and Fifth Avenue, the city’s first traffic tower, a reader can see the snarl of horse-drawn wagons, bicycles, pedestrians and oh so many automobiles—“machines” in the argot of the Twenties--clogging the street. Even the Babe had to stop for that.

The book is full of such knowing details like the Thomas splint, an invention of World War I medicine, that saves Jamie Fraser’s daughter from losing her leg.

Larger-than-life Ruth is made palpable through a mosaic of small but unassailable images. Ruth, resplendent in a red satin dressing gown worn over a pair of green and white diamond pajamas, earns “a low whistle” from Cook when he is admitted to the Babe’s sumptuous apartment in the Ansonia Hotel. It earns something more important from the reader: a belief in narrative plausibility and in the characters that inhabit it.

So, when Stewart writes of the Babe that getting angry at him was a waste of time, “like losing your temper at a thunderstorm,” you know he knows what he’s talking about.

The book is grand. Just like the Babe."

~Jane Leavy, Author of The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created

The Fraser and Cook Historical Mystery Series
The Lincoln Deception
The Paris Deception
The Babe Ruth Deception

Ratings and reviews

post-WW1, historical-figures, historical-novel, historical-places-events, historical-research, bootlegging, gangsters, baseball, illegal-gambling***** I'm a history geek, so the idea of bootleggers, gangsters, and a national hero, all in a setting that only recently was recognized by the Baseball bigwigs really made me want to read this one. Not because I geek baseball (there are others in the family for that), but because of all the other stuff that went on 100 years ago. There's the personal story about interracial dating that was so out of the question, the bombing on Wall street, All Black baseball teams, illegal gambling and the Chicago Sox scandal, Babe Ruth's inability to believe that he was being made a chump, and other sidelines. I learned a lot, but others in my family ought to really like it even more. The publisher's blurb covers a lot and I don't do spoilers. Narrator L. J. Ganser is quite appropriate for the material and was easy to listen to. I won this audiobook in a giveaway. Yay me!

About the author

After many years as a trial and appellate lawyer, David O. Stewart became a bestselling writer of history and historical fiction. His award-winning histories have explored the writing of the Constitution, the gifts of James Madison, the outrageous western expedition and treason trial of the mysterious Aaron Burr, and the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson. His Fraser and Cook Historical Mystery Series includes The Lincoln Deception, about the John Wilkes Booth Conspiracy, The Paris Deception, set at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, and The Babe Ruth Deception, which follows the Babe’s first two years with the Yankees.