MURDER IN THE HAMPTONS
A Mystery

      “Social climbing can be murder in a society where some people would kill for acceptance into the elite classes, a subject that author Jeanne Toomey explores in her first novel featuring intrepid private investigator Liz Grady. The stately mansions and environs of Long Island’s most exclusive communities provide the backdrop for homicide in Ms. Toomey’s Murder in the Hamptons, a quick, enjoyable whodunit that thrusts the reader into this gilded world with deceptive ease. The Hamptons represent a closed society where the déclassé nouveau riche and unacceptable ethnic breeds need not apply for admission. Its yacht-shoed denizens can sniff out a poseur with their upturned noses as deftly as a Pomeranian lap-of-luxury dog and quickly summon up their distinctive Long Island lockjaw locution to dismiss those who dare try to crash the filigreed gates of privilege. Grady is called in on the case after a society friend, an expert swimmer, apparently drowns and in the words of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s super sleuth Sherlock Holmes, ‘the game is afoot.’
            “A bejeweled string of the Hamptons’ finest alabaster pearls begin to fall victim to an elusive killer and Grady suspects someone who may have been denied inclusion to the society listings because the accumulating corpses were all members of the Blue Book Committee. ‘Blue Blood Runs Red’ screams one local newspaper headline as the case becomes a media cause célèbre in the manner of the modern media’s tendency toward tabloid schlock.
            “Grady has friends among the rich and powerful even though she characterizes herself as ‘being from the ‘wrong side of the tracks’ and her aristocratic associates become indispensable as she closes in on her quarry. She is joined in the hunt by her beloved, detective Walt Herrick, whose police force contacts also come in handy in tracking down the nefarious murderer.
      “ ‘Murder in the Hamptons’ has a quaint, nostalgic air about it and is blessedly free of the lurid detail and gore that permeates contemporary murder fiction obsessed with serial killers and sexual deviation. Bishop Reginald Heber’s quote about the Hamptons where ‘…every prospect pleases, and only man is vile’ is cited on the book’s back cover and the novel also makes mention of real personalities and Hamptons locations to lend atmospheric authenticity to the tale. Ms. Toomey also cites the murder case of movie producer Roy Radin (‘The Cotton Club’) and filmmaker Woody Allen’s child custody fight with longtime companion actress Mia Farrow as well as an IRS tax probe involving Allen’s Hamptons residence, which was once owned by Ambassador Gerard Smith. The murder mystery is also replete with the names of numerous local establishments, landmarks and scenic spots that anyone familiar with the Hamptons will enjoy.
            “Grady is a member of Alcoholics Anonymous in the tradition of Lawrence Block’s fictional private eye Matthew Scudder (‘Eight Million Ways to Die’). Ms. Toomey’s Grady joins a Northwest Corner gallery of private detectives that includes West Cornwall author Jerome Doolittle’s Boston-based gumshoe Tom Bethany, whose exploits fill three novels (‘Body Scissors,’ ‘Stranglehold’ and ‘Bearhug’).
      “Toomey is no dilettantish interloper in the lifestyles of the Hamptons’ rich and famous. She owns a cottage on Little Fresh Pond in Southampton and has also handled society public relations accounts during her long and varied career, which includes journalistic stints at a daunting list of newspapers. She also has a soft spot for men in uniform like her fictional counterpart. Her late second husband, Peter Terranova, was a New York City Police Department captain and her current husband, Jim Gray, is a former lieutenant with the Cleveland, Ohio Police Department. Toomey herself covered the homicide beat for ‘The Brooklyn Eagle’ during the 1940s when she sat in on the Alger Hiss trial. The up-and-coming mystery writer currently heads Pegeen Fitzgerald’s Last Post, an animal sanctuary in Falls Village.”
      —Tim Fitzmaurice, Falls Village/Cornwall (Connecticut)
     
     
            “Author and veteran journalist Jeanne Toomey is no stranger to the Hamptons, nor to the worlds of high society and crime. She owned a home in Southampton for many years, with her husband, Jim Gray, a former Cleveland Police lieutenant, and she covered many murders for New York City papers and other dailies around the country. Now she has combined her vast police and detective knowledge in her first book, ‘Murder in the Hamptons,’ staging three society-related deaths right here on the East End. On the jacket of her book, published by Sunstone Press of New Mexico, it says, ‘Where social climbing is a home industry and membership in exclusive clubs is often unobtainable, ‘Murder in the Hamptons’ offers a unique motive for homicide: exclusion from a coveted world of social position. Though fictional, the familiar scenes and characters in this novella bring to life a portrait of a beloved seashore town where in the words of Bishop Reginald Heber “…every prospect pleases, and only man is vile.”’
            “Perhaps in her continued passion for solving mysteries, much of Toomey’s book is autobiographical. She has cast herself as private investigator Liz Grady, and her partner in crime is a local police detective, Walt Herrick. ‘Like a police dog, I seem attracted to men in uniform,’ she confesses in the book, as she also admits in real life. Her second husband, Peter Terranova, now deceased, was a captain in the New York City Police Department. They have two children, Sheila Terranova Beasley of Arizona, and Peter Terranova of Southampton.
            “Toomey sweeps the reader into her book with the suspicious drowning of a society woman on Dune Road in Southampton, who was a champion swimmer and a friend of Liz Grady’s. Grady is called to help in the local investigation, which leads to her involvement in subsequent murders. She notices a pattern to all the killings, besides the fact that all of them involve people on the Blue Book Committee. One of them is an author, who is stabbed with a letter opener, and the third victim is another society woman who dies mysteriously because of a passion for her rose garden. Throughout the book, which is available in all Book Hamptons and at Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor, there are references to local names and places, some of which have been changed. Several local newspapers are mentioned, including ‘The East Hampton Independent,’ ‘The Southampton Press,’ and ‘The Sag Harbor Express.’ Toomey also makes reference to local establishments including Gurney’s Inn, The American Hotel, Lobster Inn, Driver’s Seat, Rogers Memorial Library, to places such as Cow Neck Farm, Gondola Gardens, and Little Fresh Pond, and to local people, including Robert D. L. Gardiner, the late Dr. Emma Bellows of Hampton Bays, Victoria Gardner, Ted Conklin, and various local police chiefs.
            “The book is fun and fast reading, since the author’s journalistic style comes through with brevity, punch, and wit. In her tough newspaper style, Toomey’s quotes and descriptions are clear, crisp, and to the point. There are no ponderous paragraphs here, so the story moves quickly. In her sense of detail with each deadly deed, the reader can sense Toomey’s keen interest in crime stories. Before writing this book, she wrote often for various ‘who dunnit?’ detective magazines. Her passion for danger and adventure started early, as one of the city’s youngest crime reporters, for ‘The Brooklyn Eagle’ in 1943. At 21, Toomey was covering some of the top homicides in the metro area. She was assigned to Brooklyn Police Headquarters at Bergen Street, where she got an exclusive story on the disappearance of John Flaherty, head of the grain handlers union of the International Longshoreman’s Association. She also covered part of the Alger Hiss trial, and the famous trial of Benjamin Feldman, a druggist who killed his wife and mother-in-law with strychnine. At The Eagle during the ‘50s, Toomey was assigned to cover ship news in the New York Harbor, where she boarded the ocean liners traveling to Europe. Here she interviewed such notables as Winston Churchill, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Boyer, and Alan Ladd. It was aboard the superliner S.S. United States, making its maiden voyage to Europe in 1952, that Toomey met the famous breakfast radio couple Pegeen and Ed Fitzgerald of WOR—in the ship’s kennel. They realized they shared a love of animals, which remained a bond that catapulted Toomey and her husband to their present-day position, as directors of the Fitzgeralds’ animal sanctuary in Falls Village, Connecticut. ‘I guess I went from crime to cats,’ joked Toomey, who oversees 350 cats and other animals at the Last Post Shelter, as it is called. She still maintains her summer cottage in North Sea, on Little Fresh Pond.
            “After their first meeting, Toomey joined the Fitzgeralds to work on their radio show, doing many animal segments. She later went to work at The Journal American, King Features Syndicate, and the Associated Press. With her great love of travel, Toomey also ventured around the country, working at various dailies including ‘The Asbury Park Press,’ ‘The Philadelphia Journal,’ ‘The Reno Evening Gazette,’ ‘The Stamford Advocate,’ and ‘The Orlando Sentinel,’ where she met her present husband. Most recently, she has done society public relations in New York. Toomey’s true-life adventures are just as lively as her book, and will probably be used in more of her upcoming books. She tells, for instance, how she met Jim Gray, the Cleveland cop, during her stint at the Orlando paper. ‘I was sitting at a beauty parlor on a hot day with my hair in curlers, and they were taking too long. Finally, I got fed up, so I just got out of the chair, gave the hair stylist a $20 bill, and walked out of the place with my hair still in curlers. I walked next door to an air conditioned bar, and Jim Gray was the only man sitting there. At the time he was working in undercover security for Disney World, when it was being built. When he saw me walk in, he looked up and quipped, ‘Where’s your spaceship? Anyone else hurt in the wreck?’ I went to the ladies room, ripped the curlers out of my hair, and threw them in the garbage, and then came back to the bar. We’ve been together ever since.’
            “Since most of Toomey’s time is now spent with the animals, she has taken to writing books instead of pounding the newspaper beat. But the business has stayed in her blood for the past 50 years. ‘I have one thing to say about the newspaper business,’ she reported. ‘When Freddy Anderson, a court reporter at ‘The Brooklyn Eagle,’ went to his first baseball game, he asked his father what the baseball players did for a living. His father responded, ‘They play professional baseball, son.’ Freddy said, ‘You mean they get PAID for playing ball?’ That’s what the newspaper business is to me. It’s been 50 years of playing ball.’ She smiled. ‘And now, I’ll continue writing, in my books. I have two more thrillers underway.’”
     
      —Debbie Tuma, The East Hampton Independent