An Investigation Between Sports and Justice in Paul Auster's Novel

"Squeeze Play" is the first book written by the American author Paul Auster, under the pseudonym of Paul Benjamin.

Since this novel, the author shows a great narrative ability: the characters, for example, are described and characterized in a superb way, even or perhaps especially the secondary ones.

The protagonist Max Klein

The narrating voice is Max Klein, an honest private investigator of strong principles, in fact, before working on his own, he worked for the District Attorney, but he got fired because he could not stand the dirt that the State hid.

The final straw is the killing of a black kid at the hands of a white policeman, drunk during the work shift, which is covered up with nothing but gruesome to say the least. Klein has a failed marriage and a lively nine-year-old son, who is committed to seeing at least once a week.

The arrival of Chapman

The engine that starts the novel, however, is the arrival in the study of Klein Chapman, a baseball champion who had been the idol of the nation. Chapman had been an atypical athlete: brilliant career in the field, one of the best ever, but then he also graduated in History and loved and knew art and culture. He was a gentleman and was the perfect face for any kind of cultural or social campaign. Then the disaster: an accident that had made him lose a leg, and obviously put an end to his career in baseball. Chapman had disappeared from the scene in general grief, only to return once he stood up as promoter and financier of everything concerning the handicapped, returning to be loved by the whole of America even more than before, because he had proved to be a true hero, one who had fallen and got up. But one afternoon, in fact, Chapman enters Klein's office with a letter that looks like a death threat, and asks him to help him.