Memorial Day weekend marks the official launch of summer. Consequently, this is the perfect time to consider tennis books appropriate for the beach or other casual settings. This is no time to delve into deep tennis history books, and it’s too darn hot to fully embrace books on tennis drills and technique improvement. At this time of the year, we all need books about tennis for entertainment purposes only. I love a good novel, and it is all the better when tennis is a major part of the story.
Faults: Not All Are Forgiven is a crime novel by Greg Milano, who writes under the pen name Orion Gregory. Milano played tennis for Wright State in the early 1980s and graduated with a degree in communication arts. Before Write State cut the sport in 2020, Milano was listed as an assistant women’s tennis team coach. Faults was published in 2021, suggesting that this was how Milano spent his pandemic downtime.
The novel centers around professional tennis player Sydney Livingstone, who is competing in a tournament immediately before the US Open. From the opening pages, it is apparent that someone with a secret vendetta is trying to kill her. What follows is an extraordinarily twisty narrative involving a trail of dead bodies and strange threats. As the story unfolded, I wondered why the killer wouldn’t simply target Livingstone first. As it turns out, there were a lot of mysteries in this book to unravel.
Faults delivers a wild rollercoaster ride with an extensive cast of characters. At one point, Livingstone prepares a list of potential suspects for the detective working the case. That runs for quite a few (e-reader) pages. I wondered if the list was the author’s own notes to keep the characters straight. I was certainly struggling myself.
While the story was entertaining, the book could have benefited from more character development of the key players. It would have helped to better understand their motivations and decisions. As a result, the narrative has an action-packed, frenetic pace, sometimes leaving the reader to connect the dots on their own. There were many loose ends that were never fully explained.
Despite Milano’s lifelong involvement with tennis, he apparently knows little about the professional tours or how players prepare for competition. For example, matches in this story were scheduled at set times rather than expressed as an order of play. Players were said to use a ball machine for their practice sessions. The tournament director also sat in the umpire’s chair in one scene. I know that I am uniquely focused on the tennis details, but the glaring errors about the sport were a distraction.
The book culminates with everyone gathered together as the detective gives an Agatha Christy-style rundown of how he solved the case. That mechanism was the only way the tumultuous journey could have logically concluded. I enjoyed the book for what it is: an entertaining story perfect for reading on the beach.
Faults (<- Sponsored Link)
If you’re in the mood for an exhilarating read that combines the thrill of a crime novel with the backdrop of professional tennis, then Faults: Not All Are Forgiven by Greg Milano is a good choice for your summer reading list. It delivers a captivating and fast-paced narrative and an enjoyable reading experience.
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