Fight Card: A Mouth Full of Blood - Jack Tunney (Eric Beetner)

A MOUTH FULL OF BLOOD is the sequel to Eric Beetner's previous Fight Card book, SPLIT DECISION, and as always in this series, it's a great yarn, well-plotted, well-written, and true to its time period.

After the events of the earlier book, boxer Jimmy Wyler has left Kansas City behind and returned to Chicago, where he grew up in St. Vincent's Orphanage. He's working as a dishwasher in a Greek restaurant, trying to stay out of trouble, but his friendship with a fellow employee results in Jimmy being drawn into the effort to save the young man's sister from being forced into a life of prostitution. The only way to do that is to buy her freedom from the pimp who's grooming her for a life on the streets, and the only way for Jimmy to come up with the money is for him to enter the ring again, in a series of brutal, unregulated boxing matches.

Beetner does a fine job with his characters, and he writes some bloody, really brutal fight scenes that are very effective. In addition, for the first time in this series that I recall, Father Tim, the mentor to all the fighters who come out of St. Vincent's, plays an on-screen role in the plot. I really raced through this one and thoroughly enjoyed it. FIGHT CARD continues to be one of the strongest of the original e-book series, and if you haven't given it a try yet, you really should.

Fight Card #3: Split Decision - Jack Tunney (Eric Beetner)

Eric Beetner enters the ring for the third volume in the Fight Card series, and his novella SPLIT DECISION lives up to the high standards set by series creators Paul Bishop and Mel Odom. This one takes place in Kansas City and follows Jimmy Wyler, another graduate of the Chicago orphanage known as "Our Lady of the Glass Jaw".

Jimmy's not any sort of contender. He's just a low-level club fighter content to do his best and save his money so he can marry his beautiful girlfriend Lola. Then one of the local mobsters asks him to take part in a fixed fight, and in a nice twist on what usually happens in boxing fiction, Jimmy's not the one who's supposed to take the dive. He's going to win the fight. Against his better judgment, and motivated by his desire to have enough money to get Lola's engagement ring out of layaway, Jimmy agrees. And of course, that's where things start taking turn after turn for the worst.

Beetner's tale is darker than either of the preceding entries, but it's just as compelling and does a fine job of capturing the era. He has the knack of putting his protagonist in an impossible situation and then making the reader race along to find out how it's going to get even worse. SPLIT DECISION is a prime example of the sort of variety and adventurous storytelling we can expect from the Fight Card series, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Highly recommended.