As I mentioned, I bought this book last Wednesday, and I knew it wouldn’t take me long to get to reading it and to read it once I started. Blockade Billy is a novella in a hardcover along with a short story called “Morality”.
The title novella covers the discovery of a star catcher for the Titans. Blockade Billy, as he comes to be known, is a simple-minded youngster brought up from a AA team when the Titans’ catcher is hurt. He comes to town, focuses on the game, but he has dark secrets in his past that will come to light and make him the only player ever erased from Major League Baseball history.
King’s at his best here, pulling along with just the right voice and foreshadowing. The frame story is that Mr. King is interviewing the third base coach from the Titans to discover the real story, so it’s told in a very conversational style that’s easy to read.
The short story, though, “Morality”, is hardly worth reading. It’s a dash of the film Indecent Proposal thrown in with a twisted preacher and how his indecent proposal causes a marriage to break up. There are no characters in it worth sympathizing with and it’s rather stock.
Books mentioned in this review:
