Blue Chipper: A Morgan Hunt Novel
by By Norman, Geoffrey
Category: Fiction , Mystery & Detective , General

Vietnam vet, ex-con, tough and colorful son of the South - detective hero Morgan Hunt is back in this new suspense thriller, turning on a conspiracy of terror at the heart of big-time college sports.Hunt's turf is the Florida bayous, where he lives in a twenty-room house he is painstakingly restoring. He's an avid hunter and fisherman who can advise on the best bait for catfish and on dressing freshly shot quail. He makes his living off the stock market, but he moonlights as a sleuth for the lawyer who is Pensacola's patron saint of hopeless causes.In this case, Hunt comes to the aid of a "blue chipper," the high school basketball star William Coleman. As dazzling in the classroom as he is on the court, Coleman faces the devil's bargain of surrendering his dreams or sending his hoodlum brother to the electric chair. Unraveling the extortion scheme draws Hunt into the dark web of university recruiters, for whom athletes are mere prey to be exploited and discarded - and whose corruption can even encompass murder.James Crumley called the first Morgan Hunt mystery, Sweetwater Ranch, "one of those wonders that transcend the genre," and Christopher Buckley hailed it as a "hell of a satisfying story." Newsweek praised its evocation of the Florida panhandle "with its bait and tackle shops, piney woods, palmetto, sluggish streams, and sawgrass marshes...[the] Florida never seen on picture postcards."Blue Chipper is equally vivid and atmospheric - a fast-paced drama of gripping suspense and a chilling glimpse at the underbelly of college athletics.