Strangle Hold — Jerome Doolittle

A lost rich kid hungry to belong, Morton Limbach II sponsored the Poor Attitudes, and improvisational theater group, and invited them to live and work in the rundown Cambridge mansion he'd inherited. When he's found dead of autoerotic asphyxia, the police call it accidental death due to weird sex. But Jerome Rosson, the kinetic Harvard Law professor representing Morty's estate, sees a need for the unorthodox talents of 'security consultant' Tom Bethany. Pilgrim Mutual Insurance won't pay off on what they claim is a suicide. And the beneficiary standing to lose out on a quarter of a million is the ACLU, whose Washington office is run by Hope Edwards, Bethany's long-distance lover.

Bethany takes the case for a one-dollar token fee and tries out different scenarios on some Poor Attitudes characters. Nora Dawson, a Dorchester street waif and actress who was Morty's last, impoverished lover...Dr. Mark Unger, resident shrink for the actors, rumored to use his analyst's sofa as a casting couch for female patients....Kathy Poindexter, Attitudes alumna turned TV sitcom star who broke Morty's heart and kept a vital secret from him.