I'm not sure why I include a review of this book at this site, since it isn't a cricket book at all. Oh, there's cricket in the plot-- and in the plot description, which is why the book was among the results when I searched on "cricket novel" at eBay (and why I plunked down the princely sum of $3 for it)-- but the Noble Game is really incidental to the story. Instead, the book is one of those "psychological thrillers,": you know-- seamy, steamy, sex-and-violence-and-curse-laden, police-procedural mysteries. But in the interest of providing a complete look the library I acquired on account of cricket, here's what I thought of it:

We meet the Winstanton School First XI early in the book, and it's clear from the start that nothing about these chaps is at all cricket. After using their usual intimidating tactics to win yet another game, the boys "celebrate" by perpetrating a horrific crime, which their thoroughly nasty (but terribly well-connected) parents and teachers, with a little assist from Fate, conspire to see that they do not answer for.

Now fast-forward about a decade. The boys have become adults, and they are also, one by one, becoming victims of the most grisly murders. The killer has been careful, but a clever reporter has good reason to remember the earlier crime involving the men, and she brings their suspicious deaths to the attention of the policeman originally assigned to the case. Can he put together the clues in time to save the last remaining (and least sympathetic) member of the team? And will he be able, at last, to solve the most baffling part of that long-ago crime: namely, the subsequent mysterious disappearance of its young victim?

I found this a pretty good read (it's probably quite good of its kind, but my taste in mysteries has always run more to the "cozy" than to the "thriller"). I must, however, reiterate my implied warning from the first paragraph above: this is not one for kids... nor for the squeamish... nor for the refined. It's adult, explicit, and messy.

[Note: this book was originally published in Great Britain in 1997 by HarperCollins UK, under the title Flatmate.]