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The Code (Brad Shade #1)

by G.B. Joyce (Goodreads Author)

3.39 of 5 stars 3.39 · rating details · 64 ratings · 31 reviews

Brad Shade has been just about everywhere hockey is played. He has ridden the buses in the minors, shared dressing rooms with the legends of the game, closed bars with guys destined for the Hall of Fame, and dropped the gloves with journeymen like himself who’ll never get near it. Now that he’s retired after fourteen years of bouncing around the league, he’s living out of...more

Paperback, 352 pages

Published September 25th 2012 by Pintail (first published January 10th 2012)

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May 13, 2012 Keith rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Book reading hockey fans

Shelves: 2012, canadiana, crime-thriller, ebooks, fiction

The mystery story, for all its diversity, has three narrative structures, The police procedural, the private detective and the amateur sleuth. Early series examples of the latter would be Miss Marple and Lord Peter Wimsey. The modern twist on the amateur sleuth, however, involves giving the amateur a profession, generally one that has absolutely nothing to do with detection. Recent examples of this type include such diverse types as Australian author Kerry Greenwood Corinna Chapman series where...more

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Dec 27, 2012 Tony rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels

I picked this up as a gift for a Canadian friend who's a lifelong hockey player and fan, but as a big reader of crime fiction, I couldn't resist dipping into the book before wrapping it up. I'm not a big hockey person (been to a handful of games in my life, never played, barely know the rules), but I was quickly sucked into the story and tore through it in a matter of days. The narrator is Brad Shade, a scout for the L.A. Kings who had a kind of journeyman career in the NHL, the highlight of whi...more I picked this up as a gift for a Canadian friend who's a lifelong hockey player and fan, but as a big reader of crime fiction, I couldn't resist dipping into the book before wrapping it up. I'm not a big hockey person (been to a handful of games in my life, never played, barely know the rules), but I was quickly sucked into the story and tore through it in a matter of days. The narrator is Brad Shade, a scout for the L.A. Kings who had a kind of journeyman career in the NHL, the highlight of which was defensively blanketing Wayne Gretzky in Game 7 of a Stanley Cup Final. Now he lives in Toronto and spends much of the year traveling the "major junior" circuit in Canada, and flying economy to scout European leagues and tournaments.

When a legendary junior league coach and team doctor are murdered in the parking lot of the arena he just played an old-timers game in, Shade starts poking around. L.A.'s top prospect for its #4 pick in the draft played for the dead coach, and in the course of putting together his profile or "juice" on the kid, Shade learns some things that may or may not relate to the murder. And being the son of a veteran Toronto cop, he's not shy about grilling the locals for more info. The murder mystery is decent, with enough plausible red herrings to keep the reader at least slightly off-balance. But what separates the book from your average crime story is the inside look at the scouting life (the author has worked as a hockey scout) and various types of people hanging around hockey arenas.

The writing style isn't going to knock anyone's socks off, but Joyce has a nice ear for dialogue, wisecracks, and patter, and there are plenty of interesting supporting characters, such as Shade's girlfriend, a helpful high-school kid named Beef, and a Czech bar acquaintance with a facility in Russian, to name a few. A fun book for anyone who likes their crime stories with a dose of sports, or their sports writing with a dose of crime. And you definitely don't need to know much of anything about hockey to enjoy it.(less)

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Dec 13, 2012 7niko rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Code starts of with NHL scout Brad Shade having his old hockey coach Red Hanratty being murdered. At first Brad isn't a suspect at all but then policemen started to question him. It starts interfere with Brad's scouting job. It's a real problem because the NHL Draft is coming and he has to decide who his team (Los Angeles) should pursue during the draft. I really was interested in this book because it showed an insight of what it's like being a NHL scout. You also knew the information was r...more

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Oct 28, 2012 Lisa rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a tough review to write. The Code, by sportswriter G.B. Joyce, has a lot of things that I love — a good mystery, a flawed hero, and a bit of action. But it is all somehow a bit awkward.

First, the story: Brad Shade is a former hockey player with a sad-luck story, now a scout for the team in L.A. While scouting a particularly hot young prospect, a beloved coach and team doctor are brutally murdered, and while Shade isn’t a suspect or even a witness, his scouting duties keep leading him bac...more This is a tough review to write. The Code, by sportswriter G.B. Joyce, has a lot of things that I love — a good mystery, a flawed hero, and a bit of action. But it is all somehow a bit awkward.

First, the story: Brad Shade is a former hockey player with a sad-luck story, now a scout for the team in L.A. While scouting a particularly hot young prospect, a beloved coach and team doctor are brutally murdered, and while Shade isn’t a suspect or even a witness, his scouting duties keep leading him back around to the investigation. To get the story on his prospect, he may have to solve the murder.

For the most part, I enjoyed the mystery, although it’s a little slow to get started. For the first 150-200 pages, the murder is peripheral — Shade isn’t even questioned by the police — it sort of lurks in the background, and while the scouting stuff was interesting, it wasn’t riveting. But the story keeps circling back, the murder always in the background, the questions surrounding the deaths always kind of caught up in the questions surrounding Billy Mays Jr., the hot prospect, always on the back burner. The story builds to a showdown on the floor of the NHL draft that is worthy of any courtroom drama.

I did have some problems with the book. First, the jargon. Insider jargon can be a great tool. It can make people feel like part of the club, people in the know, sharing the little inside jokes and shortcuts, but that only works if they understand it, if you provide some context. I shouldn’t have to go to Wikipedia to figure out what a major junior is. Early on, I got frustrated and called up my Secret Hockey Source (also a professional sports writer/editor who knows a LOT about hockey), to get a few questions answered. Unless you want your only readers to be hockey fans, you need to give them some explanation of why a 17 year old kid is playing on a team alongside a Russian professional player. (The answer: major junior leagues are a bit like baseball minor leagues and the traveling soccer teams you see in the US. More than a high school team, but not quite the pros.) Shade makes several references to his “old friend Arthur” before I figured out he was talking about his arthritis. (I couldn’t find anyone who had heard that nickname in years.) Instead of letting the jargon bring me into the story, it made me feel excluded.

The other thing I really had a problem with: the title. I hate titles that seem to come out of nowhere, and this one really did. Late in the book, a sportscaster made a reference to The Code (basically, the unwritten code regarding player conduct on the ice) but it still doesn’t tie into the story for me. Not only that, it’s a title that’s been used before. When I was chatting with my Secret Hockey Source, she originally thought I was talking about The Code: The Unwritten Rules of Fighting and Retaliation in the NHL; she couldn’t figure out why I thought it was so “mysterious.” Using the title of another well-known book is kind of a no-no, especially one so close to your subject matter.

Overall, not a bad book. I was interested in the snapshot of life as a hockey scout, and that’s far more the focus of the book than the murder. The murders are a side note — Shade was not really involved in the investigation, except as it concerned the player he was scouting. He doesn’t set out to solve the murders, and you don’t get the feeling he would care one way or the other, if it wasn’t for the fact that his team is going to invest millions in this player. It’s a fun book for hockey fans (and if you aren’t a fan, it helps to have a Secret Hockey Source, for when you get stuck). I wouldn’t be opposed to giving Joyce’s fiction one more try, but I hope next time around he’s more invested in the actual mystery.(less)

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Jan 03, 2013 Lance Charnes rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who like to mix sports mayhem with murder mayhem

Shelves: fiction-mystery-intrigue

The Code is two things I generally don’t like – an amateur-sleuth mystery and a sports story – and yet I’d give it 4.5 stars if we could give half-stars on GR. How does this happen?

My beef with amateur-sleuth novels is that the sleuth in question usually has no especially good reason to be investigating the crime at hand and usually no qualifications to do so other than being a busybody. In this case, however, Our Hero – L.A. Kings hockey scout Brad Shade – has every reason in the world to be in...more The Code is two things I generally don’t like – an amateur-sleuth mystery and a sports story – and yet I’d give it 4.5 stars if we could give half-stars on GR. How does this happen?

My beef with amateur-sleuth novels is that the sleuth in question usually has no especially good reason to be investigating the crime at hand and usually no qualifications to do so other than being a busybody. In this case, however, Our Hero – L.A. Kings hockey scout Brad Shade – has every reason in the world to be involved: his top draft pick’s coach is murdered after an oldtimer’s game in which Shade plays. Shade has to make sure golden-boy player Billy Mays is recruitable and isn’t involved in the murder so the Kings don’t waste their first-round pick and Shade doesn’t get fired. And since scouts are sleuths of a kind, he has the toolkit to do the work.

The other reason this setup works well is that Shade’s first priority is getting the dope on Mays, not investigating the murder. The information he picks up along the way also helps him eventually work out the crime, but that’s not his main focus. The police are in the background doing their thing and Shade feeds them information as he goes along; this isn’t a brilliant hero vs. doofus cops thing. Our Hero isn’t Miss Marple or Jessica Fletcher.

As for the sports: author G.B. Joyce’s hockey talk flies thick and fast, the inside-hockey atmosphere hangs low over all the proceedings, and Shade – a former almost-big-time player – offers nonstop commentary on the leagues, the players, and the life. It all sounds very real to someone who’s watched a total of thirty minutes of hockey in his entire life. I suspect the level of accuracy is pretty high given that Joyce is Canadian writing for Canadians about their national sport, and that he used to be a hockey scout himself. That said, I was able to get through the book without getting lost in the world even when I had to let the rink talk wash over me while I plucked out the gist. The plot isn’t so much about the action on the ice as it is about the politics of the game – and politics is a universal game.

Shade is yet another down-at-the-heels detective hero, but at least he’s not bedeviled by the usual things. He isn’t an alcoholic or problem gambler, he has an apparently healthy relationship with a girlfriend, no dead wives or martyred children, and while he’s not flush, he’s also not poverty-stricken. As a player he used to be somebody, or almost somebody, and now is repeatedly made aware of his much more peripheral place in his chosen world. He’s a nice change from the thoroughly dysfunctional literary characters who often investigate crimes. Shade’s voice is mordant, sarcastic, and often world-weary, but is easy to get along with.

The missing half-star is because the only major female character other than Shade’s girlfriend is basically a cartoon, and that Mays is such an upstanding young man that he seems as if he’s been brought in from the 1950s by a time machine. I understand Joyce is trying to make the point that Mays is uncorrupted by the sleaze surrounding him, but a healthy 18YO with girls dripping off him and he doesn’t want to score? Come on.

The Code is a well-written mystery with atmosphere to burn and a hero you won’t mind spending 300 pages with. I bought it as an experiment in reading someone I’d never heard of, and it paid off. If you like watching ESPN with Cloo running in a P-in-P window and you can’t keep your hands off Coben’s Myron Bolitar books, this is the novel for you.
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Sep 29, 2012 Lisa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads

I won this on First Reads.

Very well written. I am thankful that I was able to read this. I love mysteries and although I am not into hockey that much, it was not a problem. Thank you for the read.

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May 05, 2013 Eric Foster rated it 1 of 5 stars

If I could give this book zero stars, I would. Horrible writing. This is the first book that I put down and refused to continue reading.

The author insisted on talking directly to me and I found it quite annoying. He'd say things like "I was driving down the highway and decided I better send her a text right away. Don't worry. I pulled the car over first". I'm not worried! ..and stop talking to me!! and, by the way, you should HOPE I'm worried, because right now I'm not feeling any emotions AT AL...more

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Dec 28, 2012 Mathilde rated it 4 of 5 stars

The last 1/4 of this book pushed it from 3 stars to 4 stars for me. I had a hard time getting into this, although it had humor and a self-deprecating protagonist. The writing wasn't outstanding but it wasn't horrible. I think the beginning was just a bit slow for me, but I thought everything tied together well in the end. Perhaps a little more knowledge (as compared to none) of all the midget, junior, professional hockey leagues would have helped me through the first part of the book.I would rec...more

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Apr 28, 2013 Cheryl rated it 2 of 5 stars

I'm a hockey fan but not a big fan of this book.

I started this book with high hopes but my expectations went downhill quickly.

Brad Shade "the Shadow" played pro hockey (although never very well) and is now a scout. Shade never comes across as a very sympathetic character and it was a chore to make my way through this disjointed, boring story - about two murders - which should have at least added some excitement to it.

I wouldn't recommend this to: sports fans, mystery aficionados or anyone who wa...more

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May 11, 2013 gert rated it 3 of 5 stars

cute, but not too cute. you'll enjoy it more if you're even vaguely interested in hockey. more so if you're canadian. more more so if you live in ontario.

self-deprecating amateur sleuth, familiar w/the parties in a murder case (but not really, he has a license. this was a weak addition to the story. not fleshed out at all) arbitrarily decides to solve it. and look! he does.

perfect bath/beach/don't feel like thinking too hard read. and i'll follow the series when i fall within the afore mentione...more

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Sep 05, 2012 Darcia Helle rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: first-reads-giveaways, fiction, suspense-thriller-mystery

I've been an avid hockey fan since about the age of 12, and was excited to read a novel taking us inside the hockey world. My excitement, however, quickly dissipated. For me, there was just so much wrong here.

The overall tone is one of negativity. The image given is one of an entire league of players who despise one another. I have no doubt there are some who do, though I don't believe it's anywhere near as excessive and ubiquitous as this book leads us to believe.

The main character is not likab...more

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Oct 02, 2012 wade rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a mystery novel for the sports fan. Brad Shade is a scout for the LA franchise in the National Hockey League with its eyes on a star amateur hockey player Billy Mays Jr. In the period right before the NHL drat while he is evaluating this future star the player's coach and team doctor are killed after a game. Brad's job is now twofold evaluating Billy as a prospect but he also takes it on himself to look into who murdered the coach.
The book move along well. The characters are well devel...more

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Sep 29, 2012 Terri rated it 3 of 5 stars

Part murder mystery part Hockey story it does both quite well. Brad Shade is a very likable character sarcastic and funny. A former hockey player turned P>I> turned hockey scout , he comments on both world's with a keen eye and a sarcastic wit.
He has a sense of justice and watching him piece together the mystery and make sure the villans get their comeupance is a quick fun read.
I would gladly read more books by the author or about this character.

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Sep 11, 2012 Staci rated it 3 of 5 stars

Although not much of a hockey fan I am a mystery fan and I enjoyed The Code and have passed it on to the high school to add to their reading shelf. Very interesting and surprising find. Would like to read more from G.B. Joyce. 3 stars from me!

My rating system is as follows:

5 stars - Excellent, Worth Every Penny, Made It Into My Personal Library!
4 stars - Great book, but not a classic.
3 stars - Good overall, generally well written.
2 stars - Would not recommend based on personal criteria.
1 star -...more

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Jan 16, 2012 Kris rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really enjoyed "The Code" by G.B. Joyce...and I'm not even a huge hockey fan! In "The Code" Brad Shade, a scout for the LA Kings, former NHL player, and son of a detective finds himself in the middle of the murder of an OHL hockey coach.
The mystery aspects of the book are solid, the logical thought process of how Shade deduces the 'who dunnit' part is well done even if the answer isn't hugely surprising. What caught me was how much life and information the author, Joyce, added to the story ab...more

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May 16, 2013 Jlauf rated it 3 of 5 stars

For me, I thought Joyce could've made the book more exciting. As a hockey fan, I learned a little bit about scouting processes, but not as much as I might have liked. I felt like he could have tied in more sequences from earlier in the book into the endings. While it was an fairly entertaining book in all, I wasn't left too surprised in the end. It was ok.

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Feb 11, 2013 Christopher Clark rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book was hard for me to get into. I almost stopped reading a couple times because the tough guy Canadian voice was hard for me to get into. This book also surprised me as a mystery. The protagonist figured out who the killer well away from the end and yet there was really no twist. Maybe I am twist addicted, but this made the ending fall pretty flat to me.

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Aug 23, 2012 Exapno Mapcase rated it 3 of 5 stars

The Code is a real funny and interesting sports novel. It features Brad Shade a journeyman hockey player, now a scout/P.I. It doesn’t follow a traditional mystery format, as he continues with scouting and the mystery hangs around peripherally. Shade is a sardonic but likable character and it’s fun to watch him piece together the answers.
Free review copy.

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Sep 21, 2012 Meryan rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm not a Hockey fan,lol,so it would be unfair for me to judge that part of the book but the rest of it I really liked and some of it was really funny.I surely didn't expect the end and had no clue of it during the whole book.All in all I would recomend it especially if you follow Hockey.I won it through Good Reads First Reads.

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Sep 11, 2012 Sam rated it 4 of 5 stars

A mixture of the hockey world and murder mystery. Meet Brad Shade, ex-hockey player turned hockey scout turned private detective. When coaching legend Red Hanratty is murdered Shade starts to investigate. I will say that this book was more about the hockey world then mystery but all in all a good read. I would definitely recommend it. I won this from LibraryThing Early Review.

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Jan 01, 2013 Kathy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2013, fiction, ted-s-shelf

Book was well-written and very humorous. Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that I really enjoy hockey, you really have to be a true "hockey wonk" to completely understand the details and personalities of the story.

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Mar 14, 2013 Sue rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: library-ebook

I'm not a hockey fan but I found The Code a great read. Loved the insider look at the draft and how it works. I'm looking forward to his next book already.

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Aug 09, 2012 Caroline Ingvaldsen rated it 4 of 5 stars

First in a new and entertaining "insider" hockey series featuring Brad Shade, earthy educated hockey scout and retired private detective.

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Dec 01, 2012 Natasha added it · review of another edition

So I've not actually finished this book yet. I'm around chapter 10 so far and put it down quite a while ago. I WILL read the rest of it. I won this copy through Goodreads Giveaways and I appreciate that they give us these opporunities on here. I entered to win this book because it sounded good and I thought it would be a good one to start with to open myself up to a new genre of novel. I still believe that it could be a success, but so far it's been mainly focused on the sports side of it and it...more

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Dec 19, 2012 Ruth rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was a random pick up from the library shelves. I had no expectations about it. I really enjoyed it. It is nicely slow-moving. And interesting in a fun way.

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Jan 26, 2013 Josh Schroeder rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Hockey fans and those who enjoy crime and detective stories

Shelves: from-library

The plot was a little predictable, but the storytelling was engaging enough to keep me with it. I found it enjoyable once I got into it.

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Sep 18, 2012 Barbara Huskey rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads

Won a copy from the Goodreads First Reads Giveaway.

Good mystery novel. I am not a huge sports fan, but I do enjoy the occasional hockey game and I love mysteries. This book taught me some things about hockey and the mystery portion was well done. I would likely read other mystery novels by this author.

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Jan 20, 2013 Dave rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mysteries

I had a lot of fun with this one. If you don't have a history with hockey, or at least a strong interest in the sport, you may not enjoy it all that much, but I found the mixture of murder and behind-the-scenes hockey intrigue a blast.

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Oct 31, 2012 Abby Moon rated it 5 of 5 stars

This was a goodreads giveaway. I loved the book! Not much of a Hockey fan? That's totally fine, because it's doesn't go on & on about hockey. There is actually a story line and it's pretty good! I love a good thriller!

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Feb 12, 2012 Georgiana rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery

Took a while to get going - for a while I thought I was going to have to give up, but by the end I loved it. Worth some persistence, but wish it didn't need it.

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The Code (Brad Shade #1)

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