BRUSHBACK

Bobby Blasco was a star athlete in high school and went on to still greater success in pro baseball—even had a brief but remarkable stint in the majors—but he never had so many fans as now, when he's been found in an alley with his head bashed in by a Ted Williamsmodel Louisville Slugger. Bobby's latest girlfriend, Elaine Donatello, whose Protection From Abuse order against him had only goaded him to new heights of crass ingenuity, will finally be able to sleep through the night; so will his two ex-wives, who'd gotten PFA's of their own without having much protection to show for it. Even his former catcher, Rocksburg Gazette reporter Joe Barone, is eager to tell Acting Police Chief Rugs Carlucci what a monster Bobby B was. With the town practically ready to schedule a parade in lieu of Bobby's obsequies, there's no great urgency about tracking down his killer, and Carlucci can turn his attention to the really important things—like whether blandly scheming mayor Angelo Bellotti will ever appoint a new police chief, and whether Carlucci's demented mother will ever get off his case, and whether he'll ever find true love. Fans of Constantine's long-running Rocksburg saga (Family Values, 1997, etc.) will be pleased to see that even in this lesser entry, Carlucci not only solves the homicide—courtesy of an attorney who obligingly confesses on behalf of his client—but makes progress on those larger problems too.