Mississippi Blue 42 - by Eli Cranor (Paperback)

About the Book

"Special Agent Rae Johnson grew up on football fields alongside her father, a national-championship-winning coach. Which is exactly why, fresh out of Quantico, she's sent down to Compson, Mississippi, to investigate the illicit money flowing into a bustling football program in the heart of the Delta. But two days into the assignment things take a dire turn when UCM's star quarterback is flung from the roof of a college bar, lands on a bag of money, and dies. Hoping to turn a routine fraud case into a career-defining bust, Rae ingratiates herself with the fans, coaches, players, and politicians who make up the university's complex social hierarchy. With rumors of corruption rustling through the kudzu vines, Rae soon realizes there's more to the game than what she'd learned as a child. And in order to win, she'll have to put all her father's lessons to the ultimate test. In the vein of Carl Hiaasen and Sue Grafton, Mississippi Blue 42 takes a hard and often hilarious look at the big-money world of college athletics. In Cranor's capable hands, football isn't just a game, it's a front-row seat to the great American show"--

Book Synopsis

Former quarterback turned Edgar-winning author Eli Cranor throws a glorious game winner in this series debut starring a rookie FBI agent who finds herself caught in the tangled web of a college football empire--and the bloody greed that fuels it.

"Former college quarterback Eli Cranor scores big with Mississippi Blue 42, a fun, provocative crime novel that takes aim at the heart of the American game."--Michael Koryta, New York Times bestselling author of An Honest Man

Special Agent Rae Johnson grew up on football fields alongside her father, a national-championship-winning coach. Which is exactly why, fresh out of Quantico, she's sent down to Compson, Mississippi, to investigate the illicit money flowing into a bustling football program in the heart of the Delta. But two days into the assignment things take a dire turn when the university's star quarterback is flung from the roof of a college bar, lands on a bag of money, and dies. With rumors of corruption rustling through the kudzu vines, Rae realizes there's more to the game than what she'd learned as a child. And in order to win, she'll have to put all her father's lessons to the ultimate test.

In the vein of Carl Hiaasen and Sue Grafton, Mississippi Blue 42 takes a hard and often hilarious look at the big-money world of college athletics. In Cranor's capable hands, football isn't just a game--it's a front-row seat to the great American show.

Review Quotes

Praise for Mississippi Blue 42

Finalist for the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction
A Library of Congress Great Reads from Great Places selection
A South Florida Sun Sentinel Best Mystery Novel of the Year
A CrimeReads Best Book of the Year
An Apple Books Best Books of the Month
A Garden & Gun Great Big Summer Read
CrimeReads Most Anticipated Crime Fiction of the Summer

"Cranor was himself a college quarterback, but he's no true believer. In his gleeful skewering of the football industrial complex, he's in the tradition not of Pop Warner, but Carl Hiaasen."
--NPR

"Cranor includes enough accurate jargon and insightful game action to satisfy football fans without slowing things down for the uninitiated . . . Mississippi Blue 42 scores as both a gripping thriller and a withering commentary on the hypocrisy within the big-money world of major college sports."
--Apple Books, Best Books of August

"Mississippi Blue 42 mark[s] a new evolution, pushing Cranor deeper into terrain somewhere between Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen, with a story that's full of characters who can talk a mile a minute and crooks that can't stay out of their own way. This is a novel about more than just a game, but it's also very much about that game and all the ways it's wrapped up with the history and culture of a region."
--CrimeReads

"If you're a football fan who can't bear to wait two months until the start of the season, this novel -- the first in a planned series, by a real-life former football quarterback and coach, and about an FBI agent investigating a college program -- should hit the spot."
--Orange County Register

"Eli Cranor, who made his bones writing crime fiction about Arkansas, takes aim at the folks next door in this romp of a book, set in Waffle Houses and college bars, on football fields and lonely blacktops. If you've followed the volleyball stadium funding scandal in Mississippi, or the political career of a certain former football coach in Alabama, you'll recognize some of the plot lines that Cranor sets in motion to tell a story of sports payola in the years before NIL money began to flow, a novel that reads as funny as it does true."
--Garden & Gun

"Cranor's signature tension and pacing are very much at play, but Mississippi Blue 42 goes deeper. It asks what we demand from young athletes. For some, it's entertainment, for others, it's a billion-dollar business. But for the players on the field, it can be a matter of survival--physically, emotionally, even morally . . . A page-turner that doesn't flinch from asking tough questions."
--Do South Magazine

"Eli Cranor made the transition from football coach to rising crime fiction star. In this one a special agent, the daughter of a football coach, is sent to Mississippi to investigate a corrupt college football program. Writing what he knows one might suppose? Football, that is."
--Dayton Daily News

"I can't say it any simpler than this: If you love college football, great writing and top-notch fiction, then this book is for you."
--Books & Biceps

"With a sure hand and a knowing smirk, Eli Cranor guides us through a world that is like a religion for some while never losing sight that college football--despite all the money, fame, and power which orbits that world--is still a game. A game played by young men who put everything on the line for a chance to lift themselves and their families out of the perdition of poverty and play under the bright lights on the biggest stage. Mississippi Blue 42 is an amazing achievement by a powerful voice in crime fiction."
--S. A. Cosby, New York Times bestselling author of All the Sinners Bleed

"Former college quarterback Eli Cranor scores big with Mississippi Blue 42, a fun, provocative crime novel that takes aim at the heart of the American game."
--Michael Koryta, New York Times bestselling author of An Honest Man

"Filled with humor, heart, and an insider's knowledge of the American South and its favorite sport, Mississippi Blue 42 is the kind of read that keeps a smile on your face as you compulsively turn the pages. If you haven't read Eli Cranor yet, now's the time."
--Alafair Burke, New York Times bestselling author of The Note

"Eli Cranor has written a brilliant opera buffa for the Deep South, set in red zones and blues bars and Waffle Houses. Borrowing plot lines from Tommy Tuberville and Robert Johnson, pulling characters from William Faulkner and Robert Penn Warren, his gonzo writing delivers big laughs and bigger questions about our beloved game day rites and rituals."
--John T. Edge, host of SEC Network's TrueSouth, author of House of Smoke: A Southerner Goes Searching for Home

"Cranor's new novel channels Elmore Leonard through the world of dark money college football, as a newly minted FBI agent is assigned to track down a shadowy cabal in central Mississippi pouring dirty money into a football-obsessed community. Cranor's prose has never been sharper and he knows this world inside and out. This is quite likely the most fun you'll have with a crime book all year."
--Dwyer Murphy, author of The Stolen Coast

"Former professional quarterback and Edgar-winning author Eli Cranor delivers four quarters of full-contact action--and the clock never seems to stop. Cranor's colorful characters--and their peculiar Mississippi blend of unsportsmanlike conduct--will keep readers turning the page. Race, gambling, murder, blackmail, corruption, politics, and football . . . this book has it all."
--Neil White, author of The Mississippi Football Book

"Mississippi Blue 42 is a captivating read by a writer delivering a sure enough win. The characters are sharply observed, the story unfolding with cold-eyed precision."
--Gary Phillips, author of Ash Dark as Night

"The phrases 'ex-college quarterback' and 'current Edgar-winner' don't often collide in the same sentence--unless you're talking about author Eli Cranor. In the case of his new novel, Mississippi Blue 42, Cranor blends his lifetime in pigskin with his gift for prose into a book that is a rare treat: a clever work of crime fiction that longtime Elmore Leonard readers and die-hard football fans will both love."
--Jon Finkel, author of Macho Man and Books & Biceps founder

"A wild, brilliant takedown of race, greed and the NCAA's unpaid labor system . . . What if a thriller could double as a civil rights case brief and still make you laugh? That's the high-wire act Mississippi Blue 42 pulls off. Former college quarterback turned Edgar-winning author Eli Cranor throws a riotous, pitch-perfect spiral directly into the heart of the billion-dollar college football industry."
--The Judicial Junkie

"Although Edgar Award-winning author and former professional football player Cranor includes myriad scenes on the field coupled with details about the game, it's not necessary to have an intimate knowledge of football to enjoy his riveting novel, Mississippi Blue 42. Instead, Cranor's brisk narrative explores greed, the perversion of the sport, its often naive players, and hero worship. [An] engrossing touchdown of a thriller."
--Oline Cogdil, Shelf Awareness

"Cranor, a former college football player, shows why the game is so important to so many, while imbuing the book with a Carl Hiassen-esque zaniness and humor . . . If you want more college football nuttiness, grab Eli Cranor's Mississippi Blue 42."
--Elizabeth Held, What To Read If

"If you like mysteries, you're going to like this book. And even if you don't, any college football fan will find plenty to enjoy. Cranor nails the excesses and vanities of the sport while showing why so many people love the game despite greed, violence and too-often disposable players."
--Sports Business Journal

"Toss me a football and I wouldn't know what to do with it. However, that didn't keep me from tremendously enjoying Mississippi Blue 42, which has a great deal of intriguing drama and offbeat humor."
--Gumshoe Review

"A powerful case for the proposition that 'college football wasn't a game at all; it was a business.' "
--Kirkus Reviews

"Quirky characters, playful humor, and insider's view of the college football landscape ensure that this makes it all way to the end zone."
--Publishers Weekly

"Reminiscent of Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard: tense, but with healthy dashes of humor and vibrant characters, some to root for, some against."
--Library Journal

Praise for Eli Cranor

"Southern noir at its finest, a cauldron of terrible choices and even more terrible outcomes . . . There is a raw ferocity to Cranor's prose, perfectly in keeping with the novel's examination of curdling masculinity."
--Sarah Weinman, The New York Times Book Review

"Readers may think they know what happened, but Cranor has some twists in store--in a plot that calls to mind Megan Abbott's depictions of claustrophobic competitive cultures. A former quarterback who coached for five years at an Arkansas high school, Cranor brings an insider's understanding of the game, the region and human nature."
--Paula Woods, Los Angeles Times

"Brilliant . . . A major work from a bright, young talent."
--USA Today, **** out of **** stars

"At once a crime novel packed with violence and desperation, a modern Southern Gothic tale drenched in darkness, and a touching, brutally honest take on football as religion."
--Gabino Iglesias, Southwest Review

"A searing and stunningly poignant study in what makes us and what breaks us and ultimately what brings us to a place of peace. Eli Cranor is that rare writer who can make you gasp, cry and cheer often in the same paragraph."
--S.A. Cosby, New York Times best selling author of Razorblade Tears

About the Author

Eli Cranor is a nationally bestselling, Edgar Award-winning author who played quarterback at every level: peewee to professional. These days, he serves as Writer in Residence at Arkansas Tech, where he also lends his expertise to the university's football team. Eli's column, "Where I'm Writing From" appears weekly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. His previous works include Don't Know Tough, Ozark Dogs, and Broiler. For exclusive content and monthly updates, subscribe to Eli's newsletter by visiting elicranor.com.