Murder on Murderer's Row — Bill Gutman

When detective Mike Fargo is sent to Yankee Stadium on a hot, May afternoon in 1927 to check out the murder of a stadium groundskeeper, he soon finds himself enmeshed in a dangerous and complex investigation. His first suspect turns out to be the Yankees star slugger and toast of New York, George Herman “Babe” Ruth. And when the Babe is also a suspect in a second murder, that of a local sportswriter, Fargo sets out to find the real killers.

The case takes on even more significance when a special prosecutor, Brent Forrester, comes to town to slow the spread of organized crime, spawned by Prohibition and the wild times of the Roaring Twenties. Fargo's initial investigation leads him to a low-level hoodlum, Augie “The Mole” Bendetti, while Forrester begins his pursuit of an Arnold Rothstein wannabe named Manny Goldman. Soon, the two cases merge and Fargo begins working more closely with the special prosecutor while trying to protect the Babe from a deranged killer, his Broadway-bound girlfriend from racketeers trying to control him, and all the while wondering if there's a dirty cop in his own precinct.

The story follows the tough and uncompromising Fargo as he navigates New York City in a year when Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic, Broadway flourished, the movies got ready to talk, and the New York Yankees, with a lineup known as Murderer's Row, were being called the greatest baseball team of all-time with the Babe slugging his way toward a new home run record. Fargo's investigation takes him to venues such as Yankee Stadium, the Cotton Club, Wall Street and the famed Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, painting a vivid picture of New York City during a never-to-be forgotten decade, before the story reaches a gripping and surprising conclusion.