Brad Shade has been just about everywhere hockey is played. He has ridden the buses in the minors, shared dressing rooms with the legends of the game, closed bars with guys destined for the Hall of Fame, and dropped the gloves with journeymen like himself whoβll never get near it. Now that heβs retired after fourteen years of bouncing around the league, heβs living out of a suitcase and scouting for Los Angeles, where someone in management owes him a favour from his playing days.
But when the brutally murdered body of coaching legend Red Hanratty turns up in the parking lot after an old-timers charity game, Shadeβs job of scouting the local phenomenon starts to overlap with investigating the killing of the kidβs grizzled old coach.
From small-town rinks to the draft tables in the big league, G.B. Joyce introduces us to a character with a self-deprecating sense of humour and an oversized will to winβand weaves a story out of strands of resentment, greed, and fear that span generations and build to a surprising, thrilling conclusion.
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