When Dr. Ernest Haas, a cross-dressing Schenectady, New York, urologist, slips into a size-8 beige knit dress, handcuffs his Prozac-addicted wife, Audrey, to their stove, and expires in the act of making love to her, it creates serious problems for everyone. Especially Audrey. Does she go down with the ship? Or does she resort to her electric multi-purpose carving utensil to sever her ties with her late husband?So begins Abbreviating Ernie, a novel about the most sensational domestic-violence case in the history of upstate New York. The political correctness of spousal dismemberment polarizes women and antivivisectionists alike. And Audrey's trial becomes an international cause celebre exploited by everyone from feminists to forensic urologists.As with Peter Lefcourt's prior novels - The Deal, The Dreyfus Affair, and Di and I - Abbreviating Ernie is populated by a variety of deliciously zany characters - a small-town police detective with a Forget-It-Jake-It's-Chinatown concern for Ernie Haas's missing penis, a deaf-mute 15/16ths Mohawk Indian burglar hooked on motivational tapes, an intrepid People magazine writer with a fondness for Dostoyevsky and vodka, a gorgeous Hard Copy reporter who flagellates herself in a bathtub full of lilac petals, and a vindictive Rottweiler with his own appetite and agenda. Read Less