SEASON OF GENE

Crime and baseball make for an irresistible combination in this raunchy, fast-moving caper, a second novel just as good as Hudgens’s wild debut (Drive Like Hell, 2005).

Joe Rice, narrator and protagonist, owns a car-detailing business; his buddy Gene Dellorso runs a limo service; they share a warehouse in Virginia. Both men are in their 30s, live in the D.C. suburbs and have difficult relationships with their ladies. Unlike the more shady Gene, Joe is a stand-up guy, though his childhood was troubled. After his mother was locked up (embezzlement, a stabbing), he was raised by his benevolent Uncle Phil, who ran a numbers racket for the Mob (Joe helped out). Then Phil got whacked and Joe did time; now he’s legit, though Gene has a hustle online, selling OxyContins. Both men are baseball crazy. Joe is manager and catcher for a recreational team that includes Gene and their employees, half of whom are being hunted by Immigration. During the first game of the season, Gene collapses and dies. He’s not even buried before two guys hold up Joe at the warehouse, looking for “the bat.” Their search for this hugely valuable bat, once owned by Babe Ruth, sets the plot in motion. Gene was apparently the legal owner of the bat, but the circumstances are murky and the Mob is involved, which means Joe must play rough. The hoodlums take the bat from Gene’s house; it then changes hands several times. Everything gets personal once Joe learns the bat has ended up with the mobster who ordered his uncle’s death. Joe makes some good moves and several wrong ones in a world permeated by baseball—the guys think and talk the game even when they’re training guns on each other. In a neat comic twist, Joe loses the bat to his poor firearms skills but gains a ball signed by his idol, Joe Pepitone.

A nourishing slice of Americana, expletives and all.