Customer Reviews

Kill Story

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This was the first novel I read in the Tom Bethany series and I must say that I'm gald it was the first! After reading this book, I was on a mission to find and read every Tom Bethany mystery I can! And so far, I've found and read almost all of them. Jerome Doolittle does an excellent job in creating and developing characteers and plots, keeping the reader totally interested and aware of what's going on at all times. He's so descriptive in his writing style that it feels like you're right there in every scene with the coolest detective around, Tom Bethany! I particularly love the fighting and interrogation sessions of Tom Bethany's "victims". In this novel they are VERY entertaining. Doolitle's dialogue between characters is easy and smooth, like in a movie! You know who's talking and what kind of tone they're using. Truly excellent. The writing is pleasant, fun and easy to read. Doolittle doesn't bog you down with a lot of unecessary information. He definitely creates chratceters you either love to hate or love to love! If you want to be entertained by a mystery with a good plot and great characters, that keeps you wanting more, Kill Story is the way to go. Or any other Tom Bethany mystery for that matter! The Tom Bethany Mystery series are definitely ones to look for when you're in your favorite book store. I totally reccomend Kill Story for your reading pleasure.

The wry, likable Tom Bethany, a bit of a mystery man himself, sets out to find out whether an unscrupulous newspaper owner is responsible for the death of the paper's former owner and along the way, deliver justice to the bad guys.

There may be more information about the newspaper industry and the issue of chain ownership than some may like, but even if you don't care that your local paper might be owned by a bloodless corporation 3,000 miles away, you can appreciate Bethany's methods, self-deprecating style, and the author's very smooth delivery of a good story. The entire story has a ring of truth, populated by far too many less than scrupulous people trying to scrape by in life. Author Jerome Doolittle delivers a great deal of amusing comment on politics and contemporary culture, though you may like it a bit more if you're a Democrat than a Republican. Everyone, though, who has suffered through watching the wrong people advance in the corporate culture should appreciate this sentence, offered in a side riff about office politics and the military: "You can learn a lot about what's wrong with the world by watching how the scum beats the cream to the top."

Doolittle brings a fascinating series of careers that feed the colorful detailsof his novels: speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, war correspondent, café owner in Laos. Kill story is the sixth in the Tom Bethany series. Read him for whatever reasons, but read him for a wonderfully good time and yet another twist on the standard private investigator story.

Dear Jerome,

Don't mean for this rhyme to be shoddy

You certainly might find it oddy

You made my whole year

When what should appear

That wonderful book Scissors, Body.

Your writing skills I have been sold

My boasting your talents gets old

I tell all my friends,

Their ears I must bend

Some threaten me with Strangle Holds!

But still I remain cool and smug

Your books I continue to plug

You are funny and gallant

You have all the right talent

You deserve a humongous Bear Hug.

Your publishers should take great stock

"Out of Print"!--Your fans are in shock!

Are their heads filled with lumber?

We want rank, files and number

We'll put all of them in Head Lock(s)

Your fans need to know who to sway

We want to get into the fray

Although we don't wrestle

There must be some vessel

To teach us the Half Nelson Soiree

I really don't want to get gory

But I've called Montel, Phil and Maury

The stifling of writers

Has made fans turn fighters

There should be no way to Kill Story(ies).

Bombing Officer should be on top

You have written not one single flop

I hope you did guess

I wish you success

Just promise that you'll never stop.

Like, I suspect, many readers of the Bethany series, the changing of the guard in the White House from a republican to a democrat caused the Tom Bethany character to be unmasked. Where, in the earlier works, Bethany is portrayed as a man cynical of government (note his references to Albert Jay Nock's early works) it becomes apparent in the novel "Half Nelson" that the character speaks out against government only so long as there is a republican to be despised.

Doolittle fumbled the ball, in my view, by allowing his glee that a democrat occupies the White House to show through into the Bethany character's personality, changing Bethany's attitude from that of a free thinker who despises government corruption into that of a partisan party supporter.

I'm glad that the author dropped all pretense and revealed himself, the series was becoming tiresome anyway.