The Winning Game

This mystery should pique the interest of football fans and critics. It addresses safety concerns about football in high schools, specifically the long-term effects of head injuries and concussions. These injuries are believed to cause CTE-chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

The high school football season is going full steam in Hobbs, New Mexico-a city on the border between Texas and New Mexico. Then a member of the high school team is attacked and his father is killed during a camping trip in the Lincoln National Forest by a man wearing the school football uniform and helmet and wielding a baseball bat.

Scientist Sara Almquist and her FBI colleagues quickly accumulate a long list of suspects. They soon learn the mother of another team member was killed on a previous weekend in a similar manner. Both victims were overly zealous fans and had irritated coaches and many school and city officials.

The actual uniformed killer is identified after an FBI agent is killed. He's the football coach who is suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy. But all agree that he is mentally incompetent. Then the real investigation begins. Who manipulated the coach psychologically to kill? Was the real murderer a seemingly incompetent assistant football coach, city and school officials frantic to fill the city's large stadium every game night, or a jealous baseball coach? Or were family members who had been abused by the victims or the coach the real instigators of the murders?