Bank Shot

Marcus Witherow is the best professional basketball player in the world. His dominating play in the NBA playoffs has helped his Chicago Bulls reach the finals against the Los Angeles Lakers. But Witherow has one big problem; someone is trying to kill him. His Cadillac Escalade was fished out of the Chicago River the day after he played the best game of his young professional career and there was a dead man in the vehicle, but it wasn’t Witherow, who has suddenly disappeared.
Sledge Walker is one of the best known sports writers in America. His columns appear daily in many newspapers all over the country. He is in Chicago to cover the NBA playoffs and write about Witherow, a favorite son from Walker’s and Witherow’s home state of South Carolina. Walker, along with the rest of the country, is trying to figure out what has happened to the star player.
Pam Feree is a sexy, flaming redhead. Her roommate is Witherow’s girlfriend. Feree thinks she knows who the killers are and she believes they are coming after her also.
Jimmy Rae Manus runs a crack house in one of Chicago’s infamous neighborhoods. He’s also a Viet Nam vet who has given up on society, but loves basketball. In a desperate situation, Witherow must accept the help of Jimmy Rae to save his mother.
Mae Witherow is the mother of Marcus. She is in danger after the attempt on her son’s life, but she may not be as vulnerable as Marcus believes.
Shorty Smitherman and the Reverend Bobby Lee Hunt are Mae’s and Marcus’s benefactors. But the two use sex, money and brainwashing techniques to control Mae and Marcus.
In Bank Shot, the paths of Marcus Witherow, Walker, Feree and Manus become intertwined in a effort to find the missing player and keep him alive, while Smitherman and Hunt try to force the point fix of a lifetime. Bank Shot is a fictional account of the darker side of the world of sports . . . the things most sports fans believe could happen, but choose to believe they do not.
But ultimately, sport is big business, and big business means big money. Big money can lead to corruption, and Marcus Witherow finds himself in the middle of that corruption. When he tries to fix the problem, he becomes expendable and has to run for his life.
Bank Shot is the first novel written by John Haslam, a former award-winning sports journalist. It is part of a series of books that take a fictional look at how sports can be controlled by greed, money, drugs, corruption and corporate America. Sledge Walker, the sports writer, is a central figure in the series, helping to uncover the sordid plots that could destroy the games we all love.