Stranglehold.

Atria, 1-Dec-91. Ex-Library. Hardcover. Very good. GREAT BOOK! MODERATE WEAR ON BLACK DUSTJACKET, LIGHTLY AGED, A FEW LIBRARY STAMPS BUT NO MARKS IN TEXT. Bookpage: Let me tell you about Tom Bethany, the detective Jerome Doolittle has wrought. Tom Bethany is tough - he's an amateur wrestler, after all. Wrestling, in a way, is a metaphor for how Bethany lives his life. When he's engaged he's totally committed, focused and very close to the opposition. He uses his opponents' moves to defeat them. Bethany has an unlisted phone in a phony name (that's real anonymity). His best friend and love of his life is married to another. She is an attorney who runs the Washington office of the ACLU. Bethany has been hired to prove that poor little rich man Morty Limbach did not commit suicide. If he did commit suicide, the quarter of a million dollar life insurance policy will not be paid, and the beneficiary is the ACLU. Morty lived a troubled life: low self-esteem and a generous nature. His parents didn't understand or appreciate him. They sent him to a psychiatrist when he voted for George McGovern. Morty spent the last years of his life supporting an improvisational theater troupe. Doolittle's writing and observations of the Northeastern establishment and fringe groups are laser quality. He describes certain chi-chi leather furniture as looking like oversized dog beds. (It does.) He describes the life of one woman: 'years of drudgery and day laboring had geared her down like a tractor for the long, slow haul.' This is definitely not applicable to Bethany. The first Bethany novel, Body Scissors, is terrific, too.