Double Switch: A Novel

by T. T. Monday

Overview

“Monday’s Double Switch is a rocket ride of a sports mystery with a wicked curve ball on every smoothly written page. May Johnny Adcock’s careers as a relief pitcher and sleuth motor on for a very long time."--David Baldacci, #1 New York Times bestselling author

Blackmail. Bullets. Deception. It’s time to play ball.

Johnny Adcock, the aging major-league relief pitcher who moonlights as a private investigator, returns in the thrilling follow-up to The Setup Man. 
     Johnny Adcock doesn’t have an office; he has the bullpen. That’s where he’s sitting shelling sunflower seeds after a game, when up walks Tiff Tate, the enigmatic, career-making PR/stylist behind the most highly marketable looks in baseball. Tiff needs Adcock’s special brand of expertise. Her new client is Yonel Ruiz, the rookie phenom who courageously risked life and limb in shark-infested waters to flee his native Cuba for fame, fortune, and freedom in Major League Baseball. Now that Ruiz has signed a record-setting contract, the Venezuelan cartel that smuggled him out is squeezing him for a bigger slice of the action and they’ve unleashed a ruthless assassin, known only as La Loba, to collect. Adcock takes the case, even though the front office wants to shut down his side job and has sent its no-nonsense corporate fixer and “director of security” to keep a close eye on him. Adcock is immediately swept up in a high-pressure game full of surprising twists, double crosses, and deadly gambits that will leave him fighting for his life and in danger of losing more than the heat off his fastball or a spot in the playoffs.
     Critics raved about The Setup Man: “A sexy mystery with a rakish lead” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), “This rookie thriller writer has homered his first time at bat” (The Free Lance-Star), and “Teems with sex, violence—and baseball . . . Monday deserves promotion to the starting rotation of thriller writers” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch). Double Switch proves that Johnny Adcock is one of the genre’s most entertaining detectives in years, and gives readers a welcome return to the sexy,
action-packed, and thrilling world where high-stakes professional sports and life-or-death action collide.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780385539968
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/01/2016
Series:	Johnny Adcock Series , #2
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

T. T. MONDAY is the pseudonym of novelist Nick Taylor, author of The Disagreement and Father Junípero’s Confessor. Double Switch is his second novel to feature Johnny Adcock, following The Setup Man.

Editorial Reviews

11/30/2015
In Monday’s solid follow-up to 2014’s The Setup Man, the major league baseball career of San José Dogs Bay reliever Johnny Adcock is winding down. Meanwhile, Adcock has earned a reputation as a problem solver for his teammates and other athletes, but he’s still surprised when Tiff Tate, a high-paid sports consultant “who designs a custom on-field look for each of her clients,” approaches him for help with Cuban refugee Yonel Ruiz, the Colorado Rockies’ star rookie outfielder. According to Tate, Ruiz is being blackmailed by Venezuelans who are holding his family hostage. Ruiz won’t talk to Adcock, Tate isn’t telling him everything, and the person who does dare talk to him about Ruiz is murdered. Adcock’s investigation rubs the MLB’s new director of personnel security the wrong way, which is bad enough, but it also offends others who are much more dangerous. Monday handles the baseball action flawlessly with this timely look at the influx of Cuban ballplayers and those eager to take advantage of them. Agent: Jennifer Carlson, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Monday’s Double Switch is a rocket ride of a sports mystery with a wicked curve ball on every smoothly written page. May Johnny Adcock’s careers as a relief pitcher and sleuth motor on for a very long time." 
—David Baldacci, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Guilty
 
"Rollicking good fun for anyone who loves baseball and mysteries, T.T. Monday takes you inside a modern-day baseball clubhouse and imagines a world in which a left-handed bullpen specialist moonlights as a real-world fixer." 
—Molly Knight, New York Times bestselling author of The Best Team Money Can Buy

"Double Switch is a fast-paced, crisply written mystery novel...that balances baseball against underworld vices like sex, drugs, violence, human trafficking — and oh yeah, several dead bodies....Monday’s prose is witty and sharp, and he packs a lot into the plot, which moves briskly to a tidy conclusion."
—The Tampa Tribune

"Monday is at ease in moving among crime, baseball, and romance. The book gains authenticity from its references to real-life figures and situations. And the first-person narrator makes for good company. Monday's second effort, following The Setup Man (2014), is an enjoyable, easygoing sequel that shows off the author's skill at seamlessly mixing genres."
—Kirkus

"Monday (a pseudonym for novelist Nick Taylor) knows his baseball well, creates a mystery out of the very real exploitation of Cuban baseball defectors, and hasan ear for dialogue. Good enough that readers who missed the first Adcock mystery (The Setup Man, 2014) will be eager to catch up."
—Booklist

"Monday handles the baseball action flawlessly with this timely look at the influx of Cuban ballplayers and those eager to take advantage of them."
—Publishers Weekly  

From the Publisher

2015-12-23
Johnny Adcock, a relief pitcher moonlighting as a private investigator—or is it the other way around now that he's nearing retirement as a big leaguer?—investigates a Cuban slugger who may or may not be who he says he is. A left-handed specialist for the fictional San José Bay Dogs, Johnny is spending time with Connie, his librarian "girl in Denver," during a road trip. There, he becomes involved in the case of Yonel Ruiz, a prodigious rookie outfielder who's being blackmailed by the Venezuelan cartel that smuggled him out of Cuba on a powerboat. They're said to be holding his family until he gives them all his baseball money. Is Ruiz's beautiful, mysterious sister, Enriqueta, who's with him in Colorado, involved in the scheme? (Is she, in fact, the assassin known as La Loba?) After being offered an open invitation to come to her hotel room, Johnny has to take her up on it, at 4:30 a.m., after sleeping with Connie, right? It's all part of the job. And when vivacious marketing expert Tiff Tate, who customizes players' images for big money, needs to have sex with him to relax herself before discussing important things about the case, he has to comply if it helps his sleuthing, right? With all this coupling going on, it's no wonder the suspicious death of Rockies hitting coach Erik Magnusson, a former teammate of Johnny's, quickly fades into the background. But as oversexed and plot-imperfect as the book is, it's a fun read. Monday is at ease in moving among crime, baseball, and romance. The book gains authenticity from its references to real-life figures and situations. And the first-person narrator makes for good company. Monday's second effort, following The Setup Man (2014), is an enjoyable, easygoing sequel that shows off the author's skill at seamlessly mixing genres.

Kirkus Reviews