SUDDEN DEATH

by Peter Brennan ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 5, 1978

Tennis, anyone? Not on this court, thank you. In every way inferior to last year's pro tennis circuit novel, Braddon's The Finalists, Brennan's paperbacky product charmlessly mixes match-by-match reportage with backhanded sex and overhand-smash violence. It's 1970, and aging champ Alex Wrangler, famous for psyching out opponents with grim practical jokes or sexual temptations, has his share of problems: the mixed blood and whore-mother in his past; the whore-girlfriend in his present; the terminal tennis elbow in his future. And teen-age Aussie Fletch Sampson is up and coming after his title. Both players take turbulent detours into semi-retirement or the bush leagues on the way to their, big match eight years later--Alex's schizo buddy kills a fellow player and is later shot in revenge, Fletch impregnates a teen love who marries somebody else--but all characters remain as fiat as Wimbledon's grass. And plausibility is hardly enhanced by the 1970-1978 dates--with which tennis fans will associate real matches--or a silly finale that has Fletch's old-pro dad keeling over at exactly the right shlock-movie moment. Double fault.

Pub Date: May 5, 1978

ISBN: 1410419053

Page Count: -

Publisher: Rawson--dist. by Atheneum

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1978

Categories: FICTION