{"id":3808,"date":"2020-11-09T06:34:29","date_gmt":"2020-11-09T14:34:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=3808"},"modified":"2020-11-09T06:34:29","modified_gmt":"2020-11-09T14:34:29","slug":"jane-haddam-one-of-our-own","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/jane-haddam-one-of-our-own\/","title":{"rendered":"Jane Haddam: One of Our Own"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I had mixed feelings opening this book.\u00a0 Jane Haddam died in 2019, after completing this one last book, and I was reluctant to start it.\u00a0 I love this series and am sorry to see it end.\u00a0 Jane Haddam was a combination of a traditional detective fiction writer and a contemporary social issue writer.\u00a0 In her best books, the social issues didn\u2019t overwhelm the story \u2013 in her worst books, they did.\u00a0 This book is a loving wrap up to her long, revered and beloved series, and if you are a fan of Gregor Demarkian I recommend it.<\/p>\n

Like a good wrap up to a great TV series (Breaking Bad <\/em>comes to mind), a satisfying series wrap up is really the greatest gift a writer can give to readers. Agatha Christie, who knew she had impending dementia, wrapped up her beloved characters in a very final way, but Haddam sets her Demarkian off on a new life path.\u00a0 It\u2019s enough for this reader to hope he\u2019ll enjoy it.<\/p>\n

This book opens on an icy winter day in Philadelphia as main series characters Gregor Demarkian (a former FBI agent, and now a police consultant), and his wife Bennis (a well known fantasy writer), head to their neighborhood Catholic church and attached school to pick up a foster child.\u00a0 While they\u2019ve never discussed children, this one, Javier, seems to have fallen into their laps.\u00a0 Bennis begins an intense round of cooking as Javier settles in, with the help of their young neighbor, Tommy, whose stepfather went away to prison in the last book.<\/p>\n

Gregor, meanwhile, is asked to consult on a case involving a woman who had fallen out of the back of a van, wrapped in a garbage bag, right in front of series stalwart Father Tibor and young Tommy as they walk home one night.\u00a0 The woman, Marta, turns out to have been a life long resident of a building that has slowly changed from the Eastern European Catholic emigrees of her youth to a mostly Hispanic emigree population.\u00a0 The super is always bugging her about moving from her large 3 bedroom to a smaller apartment so a bigger family can have hers.<\/p>\n

She refuses to budge, has a restraining order against the super, and persistently takes her landlord to court.\u00a0 Her landlord is a Donald Trump like figure who owns lots of buildings throughout the city and apparently has lots of shady financing keeping him afloat.\u00a0 While this is a gentler outing from the usually fiery Haddam, she\u2019s still concerned with ICE agents and differing attitudes toward immigrants.\u00a0 The subject matter is incredibly timely.<\/p>\n

As always, a Haddam novel is full of complexity \u2013 of character, of plot, and of ideas.\u00a0 After such a long and glorious run, however, there\u2019s also comfort here in these familiar characters and the familiar Armenian neighborhood where Gregor and Bennis have made their home.\u00a0 The series ends on a New Year and on a new direction for Gregor and his family.\u00a0 I had a tear in my eye but I also felt an immense gratitude for this long, wonderful, eccentric, and beautiful series of books.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a link to a wonderful interview<\/a> with Jane Haddam by Lynn Kaczmarek, long time editor\/publisher of the much missed Mystery News<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had mixed feelings opening this book.\u00a0 Jane Haddam died in 2019, after completing this one last book, and I was reluctant to start it.\u00a0 I love this series and am sorry to see it end.\u00a0 Jane Haddam was a combination of a traditional detective fiction writer and a contemporary social issue writer.\u00a0 In her … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[425,57,100,428,426,8,427],"class_list":["post-3808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-gregor-demarkian","tag-jane-haddam","tag-minotaur-books","tag-one-of-our-own","tag-philadelphia","tag-police","tag-series-wrap-up"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3808"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3810,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3808\/revisions\/3810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}