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STRANGLEHOLD by Jerome Doolittle

STRANGLEHOLD

by Jerome Doolittle

Pub Date: Dec. 2nd, 1991
ISBN: 0-671-70754-X
Publisher: Pocket

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.