Odle Agency Mystery Books

With hardscrabble histories from the coal fights of the ‘30s through the ‘50s, Ray and Margaret Odle found each other in the autumn of life and then found a niche together investigating murder. With “neither fear nor favor” for the unions that hire them they sort out the issues on the shop floor—not to mention in the management suite and the boardroom—and let the chips fall where they may. It’s 1966 at the Louisville Slugger baseball bat factory where two workers have been murdered in gruesome fashion. Called to investigate, Ray and Margaret face threats by long-time enemy thugs from the coal wars and nothing is as it seems— “strike” means you’re in not out, “sundown” means neighborhoods where black-owned houses are bombed, and “slope of the grain” has a deadly angle that goes way beyond radio’s familiar crack of the bat. The Baltimore Orioles and the Atlanta Braves are in the running for the World Series, as Mel Allen and Red Barber tell it, while the killer is running foul at Slugger. It will take all of the brains, guts and plain old mountain-tough determination of Ray and Margaret to track him down—unless the killer knocks them out of the park first!