State Champions is a taut thriller set against a backdrop of high school basketball and small town intrigue. Bill and Alice Henry settled in Haskell: a small town in the upper Midwest, after a stint as protected witnesses. But the story of just how they got there varies a great deal depending on which version you embrace. The reader becomes a participant in the speculation, so that by the time the official account is made known, questions inevitably remain. With State Champions, W. Jack Savage brings some new shades to this telling; allowing this third person narrative to feel like the eye in the sky doesn’t quite see everything. To say this was not a sports fiction is not entirely accurate. True, the story is far bigger but in a lot of ways, the one complimented the other quite seamlessly. As they do, the past takes a back seat to a most unexpected and thrilling conclusion. I might have hoped for another ending (as one hopes for world peace) but the one I read felt more like the life I know. You never know where a W. Jack Savage story will end up and having read all three of his books, I can say that while I may have felt his previous work was better overall, his payoff in State Champions is as good as anything he’s done. I like to read and as a result, I don’t watch much television and therefore am not exposed to sports in general. But I had the sense that the main plot, briefly introduced early on, would come to the fore following the State Basketball Tournament in the first chapter, and it did. Also, Savage uses his original art on the covers of his books and this ‘incomplete rainbow man’ on the cover of State Champions made me curious. His art always relates in some way to his stories and a significant subplot of State Champions is addressed here. This story is not remarkable nor is Savage’s telling of it, but at a certain point you simply have to know ‘what happens?’ and in this, he does not disappoint. He has a sense of reality in the way things work out or don’t work out that so many writers somehow miss. For someone who doesn’t care about sports, I found myself involved in a way I never had before. In short, this is not his best but worth a look anyway.