Two for one

First up for this post is Captain America Man Out of Time. This was a short 5 comic series giving a variation on how Cap became a member of the Avengers. Personally, I don't read too much Captain American unless it is an Avengers story so the first few books were a little uninteresting for me. It really picked up when Cap was sent back in time by Kang and wrote a letter pulling a literal page from the lake house. Reed Richards ends up getting the letter in present day and travels back in time to get Cap who rallies the troops to defeat Kang. The one criticism I have is that I am not a fan of the story line where Nick Fury and SHIELD are from 1942 and the Avengers where formed by Tony Stark as a separate entity in the present day.

The second part of this post is Screwball by David Ferrell. I read this book surprisingly quick, only a few hours. It is far different from any other book I have ever read (a bold statement). Unless you like baseball, especially the Boston Red Sox then this is not a book you will easily get through. I have read books where there are lulls in the action that slow the pace of the book to a crawl, and this book does that but by describing baseball scenes which kept me interested but might not hold a candle to others attentions. Even thought the murderer is alluded to in the first chapter the author does a decent job posing plausible alternatives, one of which changed my guess prior to the ending. 

This book relies heavily on its character development using the crimes to string them along. The setting is not important as it is never described in length no matter where the characters are. The author also throws details and revelations about the crimes at the reader completely out of left field (pun intended). It is a unique approach and probably would not work with too many other books. 

Although I enjoyed this book enough to read it in one sitting, I don't think I would add this to a list of books to re-read and I would only recommend it to fellow Red Sox fans or mystery fans who think they can get through the baseball scenes.