JANE HADDAM’S NEW BOOK A SCATHING LOOK AT SUBURBIA
AnnArbor.com
May 7 2012
MI
This is the 27th Gregor Demarkian novel, making Jane Haddam one of
the steadiest performers around. Each year she publishes a polished,
thoughtful novel, with one of the more endearing of contemporary
detectives. While she surrounds Gregor with the Philadelphia and
specifically Armenian neighborhood where he grew up and still lives,
my favorite part is when Gregor is off cracking the case.
Long ago in the first novel (Not a Creature was Stirring, 1990), Gregor
met his now wife, Bennis, a member of the Philadelphia mainline. In
that novel I was frustrated to discover that Gregor was a widower,
and that Haddam was not going to give her readers much more detail than
that. However the meeting of the intelligent Bennis and the practical
Gregor, over the killing of a member of her family, remains one of
the great mystery couple match ups.
Haddam put off getting them actually married for quite awhile, but now
they are and Gregor is feeling a bit uprooted as he and Bennis have
bought a townhouse in the neighborhood and Bennis is carefully and
thoroughly renovating it before they move in. The death of Gregor’s
beloved downstairs neighbor, Old George, has left him depressed and
pondering the meaning of life. His wife and neighbors think he needs
a distraction.
As Gregor, a former FBI agent, works as a special consultant to police
forces, a case is indeed offered to him: that of the mysterious
deaths in a nearby gated community called Waldorf Pines. While
Haddam decorates her books with all kinds of thoughts, some random,
some profound, and some just irritating, what she’s really good at
is writing a pure traditional mystery.
She’s a total pro. She sets the stage, she lays out the characters,
and she makes most of them so memorable that remembering who did what
is never a problem. In this book the two deaths occurred apparently
at the same time but also appear somehow weirdly unrelated – the body
of a local teen has been found with his skull bashed in, floating in
the club pool; at the same time, another completely charred body has
turned up in the locker room of the pool house.
As Gregor makes his way through Waldorf Pines, unraveling secrets
and finding clues, Haddam the writer lays in a background of suburban
privilege and entitlement. The characters are all sharply observed,
especially a very spoiled teenage girl, LizaAnne. While the police
procedural parts are always a bit murky, Gregor works more like Hercule
Poirot than Lenny on Law & Order. He uses deduction, intelligence,
and common sense to discover the perpetrator.
While the solution is a surprise, it’s the satisfying way the story
is told that always makes me come back for another Gregor Demarkian
installment. If you can get your hands on the first novel, start
there, but if not, this is as good a place to start as any. Gregor,
through the lens of his talented creator, will surely work his charms
on you as well.
Robin Agnew is the co-owner of Aunt Agatha’s in downtown Ann Arbor.
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