Body Scissors: A Tom Bethany Mystery - Hardcover

Doolittle, Jerome

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671707523 ISBN 13: 9780671707521

Publisher: Pocket Books, 1990

Synopsis

When Tom Bethany is hired by presidential candidate Dan Markham to investigate the background of J. Alden Kellicott, the man Markham hopes to appoint Secretary of State, Bethany uncovers shocking secrets about the death of Kellicott's daughter

About this title

About the Author:

Jerome Doolittle is a former Washington Post editor and columnist, U.S. Embassy spokesman in Laos, war correspondent in Southeast Asia, Chief of Public Affairs for the Federal Aviation Authority, speechwriter for President Carter, and Harvard faculty member. In addition to the Tom Bethany mysteries, he is the author of The Bombing Officer, a novel of wartime Laos.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Tom Bethany is investigating the background of a Harvard professor under consideration for Secretary of State. He is reporting his early results to Phil Jeffers, the manager of the presidential campaign which commissioned the investigation. Tom, who holds Jeffers in contempt, is speaking:

"I've been talking to a few people, Phil. The guy is a compulsive liar and he's paranoid and he's completely amoral. Probably a very smooth borderline sociopath, or maybe not so borderline."

"Hey, we're not looking for Mother Teresa here. We're looking for a secretary of state."

"Well, I just thought you'd be glad to know you're on the right track. Only bad thing I could come up with is he likes dirty books. I got a guy saw him coming out of a dirty bookstore in the Zone."

"So? Jacking off's no crime."

"I guess it depends what you jack off to." And I set right off to the Combat Zone to find out.

. . . The bookstore across the street had no name, unless its name was XXX ADULT BOOKS VIDEOS XXX. The shop window had been painted over so that you couldn't see inside. To the right of the door was a sort of cubicle, raised up so that the enormously fat man sitting in it could overlook the racks. He barely bothered to glance up when I came in. The three or four customers didn't even do that much. Each man pretended he was alone, kept quiet, and minded his own business. Dirty bookstores are the last public place in America where good manners survive. Or almost.

"This ain't a library," the fat man brayed. Even then the customers remained polite, pretending that no one had rudely raised his voice. And in fact the fat man had sounded bored, not angry. Like everybody else, I continued to paw through the picture books. Where I was, they had names like Bottoms Up, and Hershey Highway. Other sections were devoted to cunnilingus, pregnant women, bondage and sadomasochism, overdeveloped mammaries, pedophilia, homosexuality, obese women, biracial couple, and fellatio. There was even a small section that catered to the unweaned, as far as I could tell. Who else would pay twelve bucks to look at breasts dribbling milk?

After I had checked the stock out pretty thoroughly, I went up to the fat man on his enclosed platform. "Got anything with kangaroos?" I asked.

"Kangaroos?"

"Right. With pouches. I like pouches."

"Nah, we don't carry it. I doubt they make it. I never heard of it."

Once again, I was missing connections somehow. When I'm serious, people think I'm trying to be funny. And when I'm trying to be funny, they take it seriously.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pocket Books
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0671707523
• ISBN 13: 9780671707521
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 229