THE FIX

Eliot Asinof juiced a fair swig of entertainment out of the idea of a pro-football fix in Say It Ain't So, Gordon Littlefield (1977); here the same basic notion gives rise to little more than a standard chase-and-clobber. Football hero Bill Burke has died a mysterious death--could it have something to do with the fix that narrator Jack Rose, a ghost writer, has suspicions about? Jack teams up with Art Cooper, a never-got-past-the-rookie-stage footballer who lost his life savings on that suspect game, and together they set off on some investigating. With the usual results: mysterious figures start jumping out of black cars to bonk the heroes on the head (the ""air explodes""). Also par for the course: the dead football hero's conveniently gorgeous stepdaughter, who arrives to apply iodine to the heroes' bruised knuckles and contribute a few ideas to the mystery-solving. Her help is hardly needed, since the mystery is thoroughly guessable, just as the regulation action is thoroughly skippable by all except diehard football fans who are also partial to formula mystery-suspense.