Major league shortstop Randy Dreyfus has a problem. The blond haired blue eyed all American hero with a hot wife and two kids realizes he has an obsession with his team-mate, second-baseman D.J. Picket. Actually doing something about his infatuation is unthinkable. His team is in the running for the pennant, and even a whiff of scandal would put an end to his career. Yet Randy can’t get D.J. out of his mind and refuses to ignore the pull of the other man.
Although written in the late 1980s, well before the current wave of out sports players, the situations faced by the protagonist in this story still feels quite relevant today. The writing flows well and the story can easily be understood even if you’re not an ardent baseball fan.
The main characters are surrounded by a rich supporting cast. These tend to be stock characters, such as the hard-bitten private investigator, ever-optimistic agent, and others, but the author plays them quite well. He conveys enough of the archetype so that you will almost immediately feel you know them.
Curiously, the main characters are significantly less well-defined. We spend a lot of time inside Randy’s head, but we never learn what might have caused his sudden desire to ‘switch teams’ let alone how he really feels about. The object of Randy’s affection, D.J., is even more of a mystery. He is perhaps the most normal, well-adjusted character in the book, but we learn almost nothing about him. It’s almost as if the author is more comfortable with stock characters than with writing about real people with real emotions.
This is still an enjoyable read, but it’s one of those books that leaves you wondering about a lot of things that could have been better developed and would have made it so much better.
‘The Dreyfus Affair” is available from Amazon
