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"GP Hutchinson has the gift to tell a compelling tale, enlighten you without preaching and keep you on the edge of your seat. He takes you on unexpected trails populated by flesh and blood characters of depth and substance," says Western TV & movie star Alex Cord.
Nick Wale of Novel Ideas says, "With great mastery GP Hutchinson paints a West I can see, feel and smell. [He] knows how to write, and he knows instinctively."
Hutchinson's first Western novel, "Strong Convictions," won the Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award for Best First Western of 2015. "Strong Suspicions," the second volume in the Emmett Strong Western series, garnered a gold medal in the 2016 Readers' Favorite International Book Awards. And "Strong Ambitions" took silver in the 2017 Readers' Favorite Awards.
In addition to his interest in the Old West, GP Hutchinson has been a longtime enthusiast of baseball, America's first true national pastime, a game played from coast to coast by the late 1800s. While he enjoys the game as it is played today, his most recent novels are tales of players caught up in life-and-death struggles during the early years of professional baseball. Steeped in the actual history of the game, as well as societal realities of the times, these stories feature both fictional and actual characters, teams, and leagues.
Hutchinson currently resides in upstate South Carolina with his wife, Carolyn. Besides writing, he enjoys spending time in the mountains and horseback riding whenever the opportunity arises.
Reviewed by Jon Michael Miller for Readers' Favorite
Pickoff by G.P. Hutchinson is a thriller set in 1927 that combines major league baseball and Chicago mob action, mostly the latter. Joe Rath, a young, well-rounded catcher, is replaced by a younger, poorer defensive, and heavy-drinking backstop, BUT a home run star. Joe’s career was on the rise until the drunken slugger showed up. Now Joe wants to be traded. Adding to his troubles, his wife wants him to get out of baseball and stay at home with her and their one-year-old son. Adding further to his difficulties, due to innocent circumstances, Joe becomes enamored with a cabaret songstress Amie, who entrances him with her version of “Someone to Watch over Me.” Unfortunately, she’s the “possession” of a notorious mob boss who tolerates no hint of an intrusion. Thus, the flames of the plot are ignited.
I enjoyed Pickoff by G.P. Hutchinson both for Joe Rath’s conflict between his love and duty toward his family and for his natural on-the-road attraction to the beautiful and entrapped Amie. He is lured by his chivalric need to protect and rescue her from her tortured existence. And I enjoyed the meticulously researched baseball framework. Though the Baltimore Beacons are a made-up National League team, everything else about the sport is spot on—I checked: Bob O’Farrell, the 1927 Cardinals’ manager; Earl Webb, the Cubs’ right fielder; Kiki Cuyler, the Pirates’ skipper; and even Matty Schwabb, the Reds’ groundskeeper. Also real are Chicago’s streets and Prohibition’s speakeasy culture. The questions, then, are two: will Joe be able to get off the bench and play regularly, and more important, will he resolve his love for his wife with his attraction to the sexy, goodhearted songstress? Pickoff by G.P. Hutchinson offers great action, great baseball, a great love story, a great moral dilemma, and crisp direct prose. Hutchinson has hit this one out-of-the-park!
