Strangle Hold

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

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.