Customer Reviews

Baby Doll Games (Sigrid Harald Mysteries)

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titles or series you've enjoyed. I've had just such a wish with Margaret Maron's first series, the Sigrid Harald "cop" series, set in New York City. Sigrid's a bit of a loner, who starts to find her true self after she makes Lieutenant in a midtown squad. The first 4 books in the series are all worth reading (Start with "One Coffee With", "Death of a Butterfly", "Death in Blue Folders" and "The Right Jack") and lead up to "Baby Doll Games", in which Maron uses the literary trick of slipping inside a minor character's part (the child psychologist) to give the reader some thought-provoking clues as to how the story will end. The major theme, the death of a compelling young dancer, will hold your interest, but it is the minor mystery, about two youngsters, that provides the incredible plot twist and ending. This book also dives in more thoroughly to the totally goofy Roman Tramegra, who gives Harald's asetic home life some warmth and style. Possibly the best book in this series, although my personal favorite comes along in 7th position..."Past Imperfect". Maron delivers no matter if her heroine is Harald, or the decidedly more feminine Deborah Knotts. Enjoy!

Margaret Maron is not the greatest mystery writer of our day, but this is her best. She masterfully describes the incredible murder and twists in a side plot that's brilliant (although slightly predictable). If you buy only one Margaret Maron mystery (which I recommend), buy this one or "The Right Jack."

As a preface to any review of the Sigrid Harald series, I think it only right to include the author's note from the final book "Fugitive Colors".

"Lieutenant Sigrid Harald, NYPD first appeared in... "One Coffee With" in 1981. "Fugitive Colors" is her eighth adventure, with each book set in what was - and is - the current "now."

"One Coffee With" began on a blue-sky sunny April day. Spring gave way to summer, then autumn in New York, followed by Christmas and one of the worst Februarys in the city's memory (in Sigrid's memory, too, unfortunately)

For the author, fourteen years have passed. For Sigrid Harald herself, no matter how much internal evidence alert readers may cite to the contrary, it has been only one short tumultuous year.

And now it is spring again. . . "

As mentioned, this jewel of a character study spans the course of eight full length novels plus two short stories, one, "Lieutenant Harald And the `Treasure Island' Treasure" was originally published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and the other, "Lieutenant Harald And The Impossible Gun" first appeared in Marilyn Wallace's fourth anthology. Both can be found in Margaret Maron's short story anthology "Shoveling Smoke".

As other reviewers have noted, these stories must be read in the correct order to fully understand the amazing transformation Sigrid goes through in the span of a short year, both internally and externally. And yet, all of the books can stand alone as well-plotted mysteries. This is the mark of Maron's true genius.

"Baby Doll Games" (1988) - On Halloween at a matinee ballet performance, a shadowy figure kills a dancer in a little Greenwich Village theatre before an audience of horrified children. Sigrid is outraged. Her instincts tell her it was a crime of passion, but she has no evidence. She does, however, have a source of inside information. Her roommate, Roman Tramegra, had been acting as scenarist for the company's production of a new ballet `Ghosties and Ghouls'. This has enabled him to observe the interactions of the troop for several months. Will this be enough to enable Sigrid to figure out what has really been going on that was worth killing to cover up?

Sigrid continues to have her personal life push at the boundaries she would like to set for it. One of the witnesses in the audience turns out to be an old schoolmate of Sigrid's and has her own agenda when it comes to renewing the acquaintance. Another question is why has her boss, Captain McKinnon, specialized in Detective Second Grade Michael Cluett (who is pushing sixty if a day) from Brooklyn to help cover her department's temporary depletion of manpower. Detective Tildon is not expected to return to work before January. But why Cluett, who is so obviously just counting down the weeks until retirement? And Nauman is now ready to take their relationship to the next level. Is Sigrid?

This is another morally ambiguous murder mystery that Margaret Maron excels at; one is left with a profound sadness at the end of the book, knowing that a single decision could have kept things from becoming this dire.

It looked simple; Emmy Mion had been killed by another dancer on stage in the middle of a performance in front of an audience that included a police officer. But things aren't ever that simple for Lt. Sigrid Harald, a homicide detective. The dancers were all wearing masks and the killer got away when the lights went out. It looks like it will have to be solved the old-fashioned way with brain power, clue gathering and deduction.

Emmy Mion ran the 8th Ave 8 Dance Troupe. They gave performances and taught classes to children. Everyone loved Emmy but someone killed her by tossing her onto an iron fence on stage during an afternoon performance of their Halloween themed dance. No one has a motive and the killer got away. None of the dancers has an alibi either. Sigrid's flatmate, Roman Tramegra, also works at the theater and offers to poke around. A school chum, Dr. Chista Ferrell, was in the audience and wants Sigrid to get her mother to cover her department in her New York agency picture story. But none of this helps solve the murder of Emmy Mion.

There are actually two stories that touch tangentially in that Sigrid had started the investigation of the first murder (the mother of the children Dr. Ferrell is treating was killed) and handed it off to another team. These stories interwine as the investigations of Emmy Mion murder continue. Soon we learn that another murder involving a student at the theater may be related to Emmy's death. And throughout we see Sigrid trying to deal with her personal life as private from her job as well as her insecurity in dealing with her mother and her emotions.

The initial murder is engaging and there are enough twists and people involved to hold a readers interest. This is part of an ongoing series of books featuring Sigrid Harald so there are more to move on to if you like this one.

This was my first, and only, book by Maron and if this is an example of her work, deliver me. The Editorial review can't even get the thing correct. Sigrid had nothing to do with the special therapy dolls, that was the crazy psychologist whose name I have already forgotten. A Greenwich Village dancer was brutally killed in front of a roomful of people and it took Sigrid some few hundred pages to figure out who was the killer, even though it had to have been one of about 6 of her coworkers. Combined with this murder is the unsolved murder of a little girl, killed some months before, apparently by someone in this same theatre group. Don't read it unless you have to.