Dead Weight / Deadlock

DEAD WEIGHT Mike Carmody operates an expensive weight reducing salon in New York City. He s got it made an attractive wife, a sexy secretary, and a group of very rich women who hang on his every word. Then his stepbrother Vance shows up. And suddenly Carmody is being accused of a hit-and-run fatality, and having to answer a lot of pointed questions from Police Captain Gridley Nelson. Then there is a death in the group, an overdose that could be suicide... or murder. It s crazy enough that this police captain thinks he hit someone with his car. Now Nelson is really poking his nose into Carmody s business. And who knows what Vance is up to. DEADLOCK Glen Williams is dead, shot through the chest. Lieutenant Gridley Nelson, Acting Captain of Homicide, has more than enough suspects since Williams had a large circle of friends to whom he offered hope and encouragement. To Joss and Morgan Woodruff he promised patronage for Morgan s song-writing talents. To Tom Gaudio, help in promoting his photography. To Sarah Thrace, a has-been actress, he offered the chance of a comeback. And to Fred and Dora Storch, he promised care for their mentally handicapped son. Williams gathered them all around him like a guardian angel. But did he intend to deliver on his promises? Could one of his dear friends have had a reason to kill him?

Ruth Fenisong was born Ruth Feinsong on April 29, 1904 in New York City, the child of Jewish immigrants. During the Thirties she was employed by the Federal Theater Project, writing and staging plays, often with a Leftist slant. Fenisong began her mystery career during World War II with Murder Needs a Name, featuring Lieutenant Gridley Nelson, the Princeton-educated son of an upscale family who decides he wants to be a cop. Nelson was the hero of thirteen mysteries by Fenisong, written between 1942 and 1962. New York Times critic Anthony Boucher frequently praised her novels, singling Nelson out as a quietly perceptive detective. Fenisong lived for years in Greenwich Village with her life partner Kathleen Gallagher, an English teacher from Ireland, often traveling to Europe together and other locales together. Fenisong died in September 1978 in New York.