Myrna confides Constance’s secret: As the last surviving Ouellet quintuplet, she’d spent her adult years craving privacy after the national publicity surrounding the birth of the sisters. But this case takes a back seat to the disappearance of Constance when she turns up dead in her home. Even worse, a recent tragedy has led his second-in-command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, to transfer out of Gamache’s department, fall sway to prescription drugs and hold his former boss in contempt.Įn route to Three Pines, Gamache happens upon a fatality at the Champlain Bridge and agrees to handle the details. Gamache’s decisions have been mostly ignored and bets placed on how soon he’ll retire. Except for Isabelle Lacoste, Gamache’s staff has been gutted by Chief Superintendent Francoeur. It’s a great relief for Chief Inspector Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec to get out of the office and head for Three Pines to help therapist-turned-bookseller Myrna find out why her friend Constance Pineault didn’t turn up for Christmas. Dent includes generous sections of lively game play, personal profiles and interesting postscripts from Coach Layne, Walker, Bradley, LeVias and respected black Texas high school coach Clifton Ozen. The sold-out, media-frenzied Big 33 game in 1965 found Texas taking victorious strides in both football and racial equality. LeVias was befriended by talented white high school quarterback Bill Bradley, his “blue-eyed soul brother,” who rejected segregationist norms of the time to become LeVias’ roommate and best friend. With the able assistance of longtime friend and former teammate Doak Walker, the Texas all-star team enlisted three talented but largely ignored black players who had yet to be integrated into the Texas games: James Harris, George Dunford and Jerry “the Jet” LeVias, a beefy yet swift scholarship athlete who fought through a polio-riddled childhood to emerge a gifted athlete with the NFL. The defeat enraged Texas coach Bobby Layne, a former superstar quarterback saddled with a drinking habit and relentless hubris. Pitting two teams of 33 high school football all-star players against each other, it was the ultimate rivalry competition.Ĭonsummate sports chronicler Jim Dent begins his coverage of two pivotal incarnations of the event in 1964, as Texas bowed to Pennsylvania in a crushing 12-6 loss.
For more from Kirkus, visit The Kids Got It Rightīack when sports “lacked the glitz, the megamillions, and the idolization,” one popular all-star game stole the spotlight from all other arenas: the Big 33 Football Classic. The Austin American-Statesman has teamed up with Kirkus Reviews to bring you select reviews from one of the most trusted and authoritative voices in book discovery.
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