The Professional

Elmore Leonard, in the introduction, says Bill Heinz is the missing link between he and Hemingway. Hemingway can, for me, get a little too romantic, abstract, and self-conscious (that said he's one of my favorites and certainly one of my most revered), and Elmore Leonard can be a little too pared down, concise, plot-driven. If Hemingway is too hot and Leonard is too cold, Heinz is just right. Buy this book. From a long-time sports writer, it is tough prose at its best, written for men, even men who don't read.

Eddie Brown, known as "The Pro" for his mature, professional approach to boxing, is a contender for the Middleweight Championship. Sportswriter Frank Hughes, the narrator of the novel, spends a month at a boxing camp in the Catskills with Eddie and his cantankerous old-school manager, Doc Carroll, to observe their training and pre-bout preparation for use in a magazine article. Because this will be the peaking Eddie's best shot at the title, as well as the aging Doc's final opportunity to see one of his charges crowned as world champion, the tension surrounding the bout is intense and addictive. A simple story, to be sure, but it is not the story line per se that interests Mr. Heinz. Rather, he uses the world of boxing as a medium to distinguish the few, heroic champions from the multitude of pretenders. This echoes Papa Hemingway's view of the world, where people must be separated into those who have grace under pressure and those who are phony imitators. Boxing, like Hemingway's bullfighting, succeeds wonderfully as a backdrop for development of this theme, particularly given the prevalence of corruption in the sport, the number of unskilled athletes and managers, and the increased focus on profiteering by the media with the advent of the television age. My sport is running, not boxing. Yet I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. The author's dissection of what it really means to be a champion, how the code by which an athlete lives and competes is every bit as important as the result of the competition. Despite a few holier-than-thou passages, in which the author may have gone a bit overboard in drawing his distinction between the heroes and the anti-heroes, this is an impressive work harkening back to a time when there was a greater appreciation for a straight-forward story told in the journalistic style perfected by Hemingway. Kevin Joseph, author of "The Champion Maker"

The manager Doc Carroll is a fictonalized version of Heinz's hero Jack Hurley, about whom he wrote a memorable essay. Doc and his fighter Eddie Brown are consummate professionals. They are endearing characters, although the writing is without sentimentality. They are honest and straightforward and give their best, as a matter of course. I intend to re-read this book.

The prose is so clean and clear, you wonder if it is possible to write any better. The dialogue is perfect: each character has a personal voice that identifies him or her and makes that person real. Then there is the compelling story, dry wit, and the education on life and boxing. There are a lot of reasons to read this book, including the fact that almost all sports writers (and a lot of others besides) consider W.C. Heinz to be one of the best ever, but mainly it should be read because it is great writing.