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Body Scissors is the 1990 Jerome Doolittle debut that introduced his Tim Lyon series, with a former newspaperman turned freelance investigator working the kind of cases that the DC press corps cannot officially follow. The first case is a missing-person investigation that opens out into the Beltway political world Doolittle knew personally; he was a working journalist and (briefly) a Carter White House staffer.
The book's strength is the DC texture. The press corps geography, the working dinner-party social politics of a specific Washington class, the particular cynicism that long-running journalists develop about the city, are all rendered with the kind of insider attention the form does not require. The plot is competent.
Three stars. A small underread series. Recommended to readers of regional crime fiction set in actual DC rather than in the Hollywood DC of most political thrillers.
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