Murder Among Friends Author:Frank McConnell Harry Garnish's dream was to take over the O'Toole Investigative Agency when the owner retired; instead, O'Toole's 60 year old daughter Bridget left her convent to run the Chicago company. Now the chronically disgruntled Harry must suffer the admonitions of his surprisingly worldly boss, often having to stifle an impulse toward a meek "Yes, Sist... more »er," when she "instructs" him. And when Harry's friend, Fred Healey, is bizarrely murdered, Bridget insists that the agency investigate his death.
Harry's job is complicated by the fact that he and Fred's wife Marianne have been having a love affair, by the puzzling involvement of a powerful millionaire, Harmon Wright, and his seductive wife, Yolanda, and by the fact that Sister Mary Godzilla, as he has privately dubbed his boss, seems to be one step ahead of him all the time. It is Bridget who knows of suspicious goings-on at the office of Wright's pet obsession, Ecology International; Bridget who can extract information from the Skokie saloonkeeper who never leaves his premises but knows everything underhanded that is going on in Chicago; and Bridget who makes shrewd and productive guesses about the tangled relationships of the people they encounter.
It is also Bridget who can get reasonable behavior from Harry's worst enemy, the unlovely local police captain whose eighth-grade teacher had been the ex-nun herself. Meanwhile, Harry Garnish is repeatedly kidnapped, shot at, lied to and otherwise badly handled and endangered in this fast, funny tale of murder and other crimes set in a gritty, realistic Chicago.« less