Guy Sports: Edenville Owls by Robert B. Parker

Edgar winner Robert B. Parker (of the Spenser, Sunny Randall, and Jesse Stone mystery series) has set his first novel for young readers in the immediate post-World War II era, a time which mirrors the forces which eighth grader Bobby Murphy feels moving within his own life. In 1946 America is on the brink of major transition, as the country shifts from wartime frugality to major consumerism. Jackie Robinson is being groomed to be the first Black major league baseball player, white supremacists are organizing against the changes that returning minority soldiers expect, and women, important players in the wartime job market, are conflicted about their postwar roles. Into this setting Parker puts young Bobby, who has a growing awareness of both girls and what it means to be an honorable man.

As school begins, Bobby and his buddies have just organized a basketball team which has named themselves the Edenville Owls. Bobby and his friends like their pretty new teacher, Claudia Delaney, but when Bobby sees someone angrily shoving her in the parking lot, he feels compelled to find out if the man poses a real threat to her safety. However, when he approaches Miss Delaney to offer help, she asks him to stay out of the matter and swears him to secrecy.

When Bobby observes evidence that the stalker has physically abused his teacher, he confides the story to his teammates and to old friend Joanie Gibson, who immediately offers to help him uncover the story behind their teacher's problem. One evening Joannie and Bobby hide in Claudia Delaney's attic and overhear the man strike her and threaten to take away her child, and Bobby follows the man to a makeshift church and is appalled to hear him teaching young boys a doctrine of hatred for Jews and African Americans. In a call to the Veteran's Administration, Joanie manages to find out that the man is actually a wartime deserter who has assumed a dead soldier's identity, information which Bobby, Joanie, and the other boys finally use to scare off the abuser for good.

Parker intersperses the detective work with some rousing basketball scenes in which the Edenville Owls, self-coached and hitchhiking rides to their games, rise to the regional junior playoffs. Bobby is a believable character as he navigates the shoals of adolescence, trying to lead his struggling basketball team, learning how to manage rivalry with his best friend Nick over the girl they both like, and figuring out when the means justify the end as he tries to rescue his teacher from a bad situation. Parker throws in some brief background chapters which flesh out life in 1946 with details which may intrigue older readers while causing young readers to do some speed reading to get back to the plot.

Still, Parker's uncanny ability to create strong atmosphere in the sparest of prose and dialogue should appeal to young readers who like to see the story keep moving. Having got his feet wet in the junior novel waters, perhaps Parker will follow Carl Hiaasen and other masters of the mystery/detective genre in writing for middle readers.