STRANGLE HOLD: A Tom Bethany Mystery - Hardcover

Jerome Doolittle

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067170754X ISBN 13: 9780671707545

Publisher: Atria, 1991

Synopsis

Boston private detective Tom Bethany uncovers more than he had bargained for after he is called in when wealthy Morty Limbach dies from autoerotic asphyxiation and his insurance company refuses to pay up, claiming that the death had been suicide

About this title

Reviews

Move over, Spenser. Make room for Tom Bethany . . . Die-hard fans of American detective novels recognize Spenser as the award-winning creation of Robert Parker . . . Those same fans will want to get to know Jerome Doolittle's soldier of fortune turned most private of private eyes, Tom Bethany. . . Doolittle demonstrates the talent to be around a long time.

Boston wrestler and occasional private eye Tom Bethany is a taciturn, politically correct hero obsessed with privacy (he has no credit cards, no bank account, no Social Security number), but he's also intelligent, sensitive and likably thuggish. Doolittle has placed him in a satisfying plot that embraces prime-time TV, improvisational theater, psychoanalysis and Harvard professors.

Boston trouble-shooter Tom Bethany--the cynical, savvy, and well-muscled hero of Body Scissors (1990)--is now helping out married girlfriend Hope Edwards, an ACLU attorney, when Pilgrim Mutual Life refuses to pay the ACLU the quarter million left to them by wealthy flake Morty Limbach, a suicide by autoerotic asphyxiation. Or was it murder? Bethany interviews Morty's hangers- on at his Poor Attitudes house, a crash pad for his acting troupe and their resident psychiatrist, Mark Unger; then Bethany humiliates the Pilgrim Life boys--including Nazi-lover Cooper and his self-made-man/tyrant boss Westfall--and consults with sultry Gladys over at the crime lab. Much strong-arm stuff later, Bethany has escaped a murder setup--and nailed the shrink for patient abuses and more. Follows the Spenser model very closely, but, still, this smart-mouthed, tenderhearted tough guy is a genial, if slick, narrator. The writing is facile, frequently wry. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Boston wrestler and occasional private eye Tom Bethany, introduced in 1990 Shamus nominee Body Scissors , looks into the death of a wealthy young man whose bequest to the American Civil Liberties Union has been contested. If Morty Limbach intended to kill himself in an act of autoerotic asphyxiation, as his insurance company claims, then the ACLU--whose top lawyer, Hope Edwards, is Bethany's married lover--is out a quarter of a million dollars. Bethany learns that the insurance company's sleazy CEO was once involved with Limbach's mother and had also made unsucccessful moves on Edwards. Inclined to violence when personally provoked, Bethany is a taciturn, politically correct hero obsessed with privacy (he has no credit cards, no bank account, no Social Security number), but he's also intelligent, sensitive and likably thuggish. Doolittle has placed him in a satisfying plot that embraces prime-time TV, improvisational theater, psychoanalysis and Harvard professors. There are assorted red herrings and a fairly obvious perp, but plenty of other bad guys as well. Giving Spenser a run for his money, Bethany proves Boston is a two-PI town. BOMC alternate; Mysterious Book Club selection.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Like Doolittle's first mystery, Body Scissors ( LJ 9/1/90), his second features narrator Tom Bethany, a one-man investigator/vengeance squad based in Boston. As an assist to his married lover, who runs the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) office in Washington, D.C., he delves into the circumstances surrounding the auto-erotic asphyxiation death of a meek millionaire whose will benefits the ACLU. Bethany, who has an outside-the-letter-of-the-law, rough, and vindictive character, soon messes with a nasty insurance company owner and hangers-on at the millionaire's actors' studio. Still, this is an ultimately satisfying mystery, tempered with the Cambridge backdrop.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

This opens the book. Hope Edwards, Bethany's married lover, is about to enlist his help in a battle between the ACLU and a Boston insurance company:

I was dehydrated from two hours of working out with one of Harvard's good new wrestlers and another 45 minutes in and out of the sauna. I had carried my thirst back home with me untreated, up the stairs, over to the refrigerator for a bottle of India Pale Ale, and then into the La-Z-Boy recliner. Now the bottle of India Pale Ale sat on the table beside the recliner, waiting to be poured into the frosted mug from the freezer. Dusk of another bright October day -- football weather with the leaves crackling under your feet. The phone rang, a friendly sound because only a half-dozen or so good friends knew the number. It's not only unlisted, but it's unlisted under another name than my own, which is Tom Bethany. The phone was sitting on the table alongside the beer, and I picked it up on the first ring.

"Hi," I said.

"Hi," a man said. He wasn't one of the friends. "We're conducting a survey on behalf of a Fortune 500 financial services corporation and we'd like your answers to a few questions..."

"Sure," I said. "Let me just finish pouring myself a beer, okay?" He had no problem with that, and so I watched the frost melt as the beer level rose in the mug. When all the frost was gone except for the ring around the top where the foam was, my answers were ready for the kind of survey I knew he had in mind. I told him I was in the age range from 30 to 40, owned my own condominium and two cars, earned between $200,000 and $300,000 a year, and was a physician. Physicians have money, and tend to think they're a lot smarter than they really are, and so financial services guys tend to like physicians a lot. This particular guy wanted to come by and visit me this very evening, so we could talk over investment opportunities.

"Listen," I said. "Why don't I come by your place instead?"

"Oh, that won't be necessary, Dr. Butcher. I can drop by any time this evening, at your convenience. Let me just jot down your address there at home."

"No, really, Jack...It is Jack, right?"

"Bill, actually."

"Bill, right. Look, Bill, I'm inside all day, you know how it is. Nurses and patients, all that shit. Bottom line, I'm always looking for a chance to take the Beemer for a run in the evenings. Where you located, Bill?"

Edition details

• Publisher: Atria
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 067170754X
• ISBN 13: 9780671707545
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304