Capone, the Cobbs, and Me

Baseball legend Moe Berg provides the model for Mort Hart, the narrator of Burwell's colorful period piece set over several days in the summer of 1927. Chicago White Sox slugger Hart, who's nursing a gimpy knee, accepts an invitation to Burnham, Ill., from gangster Al Capone to view a photo that Capone says will be of great interest to him. Hart goes with some trepidation because Capone wants his opinion of Ty Cobb (who "might not be the meanest prick on earth"), and Hart is having an affair with Cobb's wife. The story unfolds mainly through Hart's fairly straightforward recounting of his baseball career and his dealings with the mercurial Capone and the hateful Cobb but also through the jive-talking slang of Mezz Mezzrow, a "voluntary Negro," and Mezz's letters to jazz great Louis Armstrong. Moe Berg was a fascinating person, and Burwell (DeSade II: A Brown Recluse Romance) captures one facet of his life with hints of others in this fast-moving novel of gangsters, ballplayers, and jazz. (June)