Book ~ "Last of the Seals" (2012) Greg Messel

From Goodreads ~ Mystery, romance and baseball in 1957 San Francisco. Sam Slater is a lifetime minor league baseball player for the San Francisco Seals. The Seals have just one more season left as San Francisco is about to become a major league city. Sam has come to the end of his baseball career and is going to join the private detective agency of his best friend. 

When Sam's partner inadvertently sees something he shouldn't have, he is brutally murdered. Sam must go it alone and try to find out why. Along the way he is swept off of his feet by a beautiful, Elvis-obsessed TWA stewardess named Amelia Ryan. Sam and Amelia try to unravel the mystery together. On dark and foggy San Francisco nights, trouble is lurking just around the next corner.

When the New York Giants move to San Francisco, that spells the end of the San Francisco Seals (it was a real team who had been there more than fifty years).  Sam (a fictional character) is a pitcher.  Because his arm isn't what it used to be, he knows he won't get drafted by the Giants.  He joins the private detective agency of Jimmy, one of his best friends.  Unfortunately, Jimmy gets murdered, leaving Sam to run the agency alone. Around this time as his life is changing dramatically, he meets and falls in love Amelia, a TWA stewardess.

I like mysteries and it was interesting to read one that is set in 1957.  Such an innocent time ... so different from today.  Can you imagine no Internet or cell phones?!  No ipods ... you bought records (apparently Johnny Mathis and the Platters played the "dreamiest make-out" music).  Plus stewardesses had rules ... they couldn't be older than 30, be married or engaged, or weigh more than 135 pounds.

I enjoyed the writing style.  It was appropriate for its time period with its mention of dames, the clothing worn, manners, etc.  I liked the characters ... it was cute to experience the budding relationship of Sam and Amelia.  Though attracted to each other, they only "made out" and never the crossed the line ... so refreshing to not get the details we would have gotten had the book been set in today's time.  Scattered throughout the book were pictures from that time of the Seals' stadium, TWA stewardesses, San Francisco, etc.


There are pictures from that time period which help set the time period of the book.

This is the first in the Sam Slater series and I look forward to reading more (I've already read the second one in the series, Deadly Plunge.