Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game (1978)

The second novel by William Kennedy in his Albany cycle turns on a plot point I also noticed in Legs: kidnapping. I just didn’t realize it was so common. I thought the whole Lindbergh baby thing was kind of a one-off. In fact, this novel is based on an actual case, per Wikipedia an “attempted 1933 kidnapping of John O’Connell Jr., the nephew of Albany Democratic boss Daniel P. O’Connell.” The Wikipedia article also notes, “The kidnapping is the central point of the story, but Kennedy also details the everyday lives of the characters inhabiting Albany’s working class and poor neighborhoods.” Just so, Billy Phelan and Martin Daugherty, an Albany reporter, feel more like side characters, as does the kidnapping story. Albany itself is beginning to emerge as the main player. Kennedy must have already had a trilogy in mind when he wrote this. He says as much in an introduction to An Albany Trio, relating that he needed to tell the Legs Diamond story before this one, and this one before the next, Ironweed, which by itself you may recall won a lot of prizes and such. Legs felt like a self-contained fictionalized biography—and a highly entertaining one—but this felt more like setup and transition, made out of the Albany color in 1938. Which worked fine as such but also very much like a second part in many series, so busy laying groundwork and developing backstory that it practically forgets to include a main narrative arc. Billy Phelan’s career as a low-level gambling hustler bore some interest. Martin Daugherty’s story seemed more cliché as a slightly ignorant, slightly idealist columnist for a daily paper. I have no idea why Martin’s father’s story is here, nor for that matter Billy’s father’s story, which is also here but not at such length. For reasons, no doubt. More will be revealed. The usual things with series. None of it had much of anything to do with the kidnapping story either. Quibble, quibble. Legs, Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game, and Ironweed are short enough they can be contained in a single trade paperback of 600 pages. They are eminently readable and enjoyable even when they are confusing. Kennedy is just that good of a writer. This second one in the Albany series is probably informative for the bigger picture but not truly a stand-alone, the ways Legs is and Ironweed might be. But I’m happy to read on. I even have the fourth and fifth installments on hand (Quinn’s Book and Very Old Bones).

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.
William Kennedy, An Albany Trio