The Killings of Stanley Ketchel: A Novel

By James Carlos Blake

Hailed as "one of the greatest chroniclers of the mythical American outlaw life" (Entertainment Weekly), James Carlos Blake turns to the blazing story of Stanley Ketchel, the legendary ragtime-era middleweight boxing champion and daring rakehell, whose brief and meteoric life burned with violence and tragedy in and out of the ring. The Killings of Stanley Ketchel is a sweeping and powerful literary adventure by one of our most daring novelists.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jan 26, 2010
• ISBN: 9780061967979

James Carlos Blake

James Carlos Blake is the author of nine novels. Among his literary honors are the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Southwest Book Award, Quarterly West Novella Prize, and Chautauqua South Book Award. He lives in Arizona.

Reviews for The Killings of Stanley Ketchel

[big_bang_gorilla · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Being a novelization of the life and loves of ragtime-era middleweight champion Stanley Ketchel, arguably boxing's greatest middleweight. The novel is quite readable, though it falls a bit short of the coveted 'page-turner' status through most of its length. The period color is delicious, and Blake's portrait of his subject is plausible. The main fault of the book, assuming you don't mind the author's often-eccentric sentence structure, is when he spends time and words metronomically ticking off Ketchel's minor fights; at such times, the reader feels as though they are browsing the Ring Record Book. Overall a nice job of capturing a strong protagonist and a compelling era.