Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #151559 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Synopsis
Kyiv, capital of the Ukraine; a bleak winter's night. Natasha, a talented soccer player, ambitious to play for her country, broods on the dangers to herself and her brother Lonya resulting from investigations into government corruption by their father, campaigning journalist Victor Kaltsov. Made public, Victor's revelations concerning the secret 'Presidential Tapes' will cause a sensation and threaten to topple a government desperate to hold on to power by any means. In this political thriller, the conflicts on the soccer field are matched by dramatic events that spiral to a climax in the Black Sea port of Odessa and on the Steps immortalised by Sergei Eisenstein's epic movie, The Battleship Potemkin. Will the massacre on film be repeated in real life? The first flakes of snow are falling. Dad is late coming home, and suddenly there is a hostile banging on the apartment door.

From the Author
Women's football has to struggle for recognition. The pitch is where rules prevail, enabling skill, resolve and determination to achieve their due reward. However, life off the pitch is so often an uneven playing field. There is prejudice, envy, resentment, institutional disadvantage. The assertion of identity is far more of a challenge.

In FAIR GAME: THE STEPS OF ODESSA this situation applies to both Natasha, an up-and-coming football star, and her country, Ukraine: each is striving for the definition of self, Natasha by progressing in her chosen sport, the Ukraine by struggling to escape from the shadow of its Soviet past.

Prior to 2004, the country had been classified by the human rights organization Reporters Without Borders as the second most dangerous country in the world for journalists. Beatings-up were commonplace, murder a very real risk. Victor Kaltsov, father of Natasha and her brother Lonya, is a campaigning journalist. His investigations into government corruption are on the point of being made public. The Secret Police are desperately on his tail. Suddenly Natasha's footballing future, indeed her life, are in peril.

The story tells of Natasha's fight to survive and progress. There is drama and there is humour, on and off the field, as Natasha's talent proves an irresistible force but also one that endangers those she admires and loves.

The lives of all the characters in FAIR GAME interlock as the destiny of each heads towards the book's climax on the Steps of Odessa, made famous by the Russian film director Sergei Eisenstein in his 1925 masterpiece, The Battleship Potemkin.

During this Ukrainian journey, readers will touch down in Kyiv and Lviv, experience the winter snows of the vast Steppe, join Natasha and the Ukrainian Under 19s in Vilnius and Riga, encounter the power and influence of Ukraine's mega-rich oligarchs, learn of the secret past of Natasha's friend Monika and the story of the ring that once belonged to Russia's finest and most beloved poet, Aleksandr Pushkin.

For Natasha, soccer is truly the beautiful game, but she discovers that the playing field of life can at times resemble the side of a mountain.

Customer Reviews

Fair Game grabbed my kids
The author has pulled off an unlikely but very convincing one-two or even three-four. Linking a fictional story of a woman's rising football career in the Ukraine with the story of her outspoken journalist father, who resembles more than a bit the real regime critic who was found beheaded in post-Soviet Ukraine, he has also given us a gripping adventure story culminating in a tense Day of the Jackal-like assassination standoff above the famed Odessa Steps. The author skillfully grabbed the attention of my teenage children, and me too, and taken us into an unfamiliar, but by no means far away, political arena which will affect all our futures in many ways beyond football

More review comments on Fair Game: The Steps of Odessa
QUOTES ON Fair Game

I loved it! A brilliant read; I just could not put it down. It's a book I know I will read over and over again. I totally lost myself as I became first Natasha and then Monika, living their fears; their joys and their dreams. HILDA TILBURY

It was an absolutely gripping story; a page turner, extremely evocative.
HARRY MEAD

I must congratulate you on Fair Game...I have just read it with much pleasure. You have woven together the historical background, the current realities and, of all things, a footballing heroine - and it works, very convincingly...You have researched the Uky background very thoroughly and it carries a worthwhile message. PETER LONG

The heroine, Natasha, grows through the book as she faces the threats to her and her father, brother and friends and we can believe in the ending, as it offers a variety of standpoints and doesn't come up with a slick solution. The dialogue is fast paced and muscular and in its picture of the emerging idealists who are of Natasha's world, it seems authentic and grounded. MICHAEL HEAD

I very much enjoyed reading your novel. The present tense keeps the pace moving just as the football moves across the pitch and short sentences, like flashes of thought, keep an immediacy in the unfolding drama.
This political thriller has enough ingredients to inform teenagers of how an emerging democracy is still shadowed by its former Russian rulers, and is a reminder for adults of the high cost of a free world. With plenty of snippets of history and packed with teenage thought and action, Fair Game crosses the line between the innocence of football and the intrigues of state security. JAN SCAMMELL

I've finished Fair Game and enjoyed the story very much. It's very exciting. Not surprised that people are saying it's your best. Message is clear and the questions it leaves us with are poignant and stay in your mind. JENI WHITTAKER

The book is a neat combination of the Lancashire-born author's own interests. A lifelong Blackburn Rovers supporter, he has always had a passionate interest in human rights, and a career spent working with young people plus three daughters of his own means he knows how to pitch his writing to capture their interest. JANE BAKOWSKI