Brushback (novel)

Brushback

First edition
Author	K. C. Constantine
Language	English
Publisher	The Mysterious Press of Warner Books
Publication date	1998
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (hardback)
Pages	278
ISBN	0-89296-646-7
OCLC	36499106
Preceded by	Family Values
Followed by	Blood Mud

Brushback is a crime novel by the American writer K. C. Constantine set in 1990s Rocksburg, a fictional, blue-collar, Rust Belt town in Western Pennsylvania, modeled on the author's hometown of McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, adjacent to Pittsburgh.

Detective Sergeant Ruggiero "Rugs" Carlucci, the self-deprecating protégé of recently retired Mario Balzic, is the protagonist.

It tells the story of Carlucci, now acting chief of the Rocksburg, Police Department. When a former professional baseball player is beaten to death, Carlucci delves into the past of the athlete and finds that the bases are loaded with suspects.

It is the fourteenth book in the 17-volume Rocksburg series.

"Ruggiero "Rugs" Carlucci is investigating the brutal murder of Brushback Bobby Blasco, a local hero who once beaned the immortal Ted Williams, even though Williams was his Red Sox teammate. Blasco, who has a history of beating wives and girlfriends, has been bludgeoned to death with a Louisville Slugger autographed by the Splendid Splinter. But Rugs has many competing concerns: his mother's nightly anxiety attacks; his duties as acting police chief; byzantine city politics; undertrained, overworked cops; and summoning the courage to ask a beautiful woman for a date. The denouement scarcely resolves all his worries, but readers will feel a kind of affirmation from knowing that Rugs and Rocksburg will soldier on. K. C. Constantine is our truest detective of the heart".

Thomas Gaughan