{"id":587,"date":"2012-06-03T10:45:35","date_gmt":"2012-06-03T16:45:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=587"},"modified":"2012-06-03T10:45:36","modified_gmt":"2012-06-03T16:45:36","slug":"jane-haddam-blood-in-the-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/jane-haddam-blood-in-the-water\/","title":{"rendered":"Jane Haddam: Blood in the Water"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is the 27th<\/sup> Gregor Demarkian novel, making Jane Haddam one of the steadiest performers around.\u00a0 Each year she publishes a polished, thoughtful novel, with one of the more endearing of contemporary detectives.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Long ago in the first novel (Not a Creature was Stirring, <\/em>1990), Gregor met his now wife, Bennis, a member of the Philadelphia mainline.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 The death of Gregor\u2019s beloved downstairs neighbor, Old George, has left him depressed and pondering the meaning of life.\u00a0 His wife and neighbors think he needs a distraction.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 While Haddam decorates her books with all kinds of thoughts, some random, some profound, and some just irritating, what she\u2019s really good at is writing a pure traditional mystery.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s a total pro.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 In this book the two deaths occurred apparently at the same time but also appear somehow weirdly unrelated \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 The characters are all sharply observed, especially a very spoiled teenage girl, LizaAnne.\u00a0 While the police procedural parts are always a bit murky, Gregor works more like Hercule Poirot than Lenny on Law & Order<\/em>.\u00a0 He uses deduction, intelligence, and common sense to discover the perpetrator.<\/p>\n

While the solution is a surprise, it\u2019s the satisfying way the story is told that always makes me come back for another Gregor Demarkian installment.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Gregor, through the lens of his talented creator, will surely work his charms on you as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the 27th Gregor Demarkian novel, making Jane Haddam one of the steadiest performers around.\u00a0 Each year she publishes a polished, thoughtful novel, with one of the more endearing of contemporary detectives.\u00a0 While she surrounds Gregor with the Philadelphia and specifically Armenian neighborhood where he grew up and still lives, my favorite part is … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-americancozy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":589,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587\/revisions\/589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}