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5.0 out of 5 stars
Fireworks and poison in Oyster Bay, December 12, 2002
This review is from: ACT OF DARKNESS (Holiday Mystery) (Mass Market Paperback)
L: What hast thou been?
E: A serving-man, proud in heart and mind; that curled my hair; wore gloves in my cap; served the lust of my mistress' heart, and did the act of darkness with her; swore as many oaths as I spake words, and broke them in the sweet face of heaven.
- Lear and Edgar, _King Lear_, act III, scene iv
Gregor Demarkian retired from the FBI as one of its highest-ranking administrators: chief of Behavioral Sciences, in charge of tracking down serial killers. A working lifetime spent in Washington merely honed his near-superstitious distrust of politicians. Nevertheless, a former colleague has asked Gregor to attend Senator Stephen Fox's Independence Day weekend 'seminar' in Oyster Bay, New York. Worrying things have been happening to the senator lately - but why?
No Washington insider takes Fox seriously; his political manager Dan Chester does things while Fox concentrates on his television performance, the one providing substance and the other image. They have a symbiotic relationship - Chester knows that he lacks the right image for media celebrity, and Fox knows that Chester has the brains. Fox isn't even smart enough to cheat on his wife discreetly; he met his current mistress, Patchen Rawls, through his wife's *mother*, Victoria Harte. (Janet Fox, for her part, never recovered from the death of her only child. Her only real interest is working with Down's Syndrome kids at the Emiliani school, a charity that doesn't fit in with Chester's grand schemes - it's too real and too religious.)
As a springboard to the Presidency, Fox is proposing the Act in Aid of Exceptional Children. While providing Fox with the public image of a saintly defender of mentally disabled children, behind the scenes the Act serves as a lever to pry funds and influence out of its real beneficiaries: organizations of health care workers. Fox's friend Dr. Kevin Debrett will benefit substantially no matter what, but the Empowerment Project, via lobbyist Claire Markey, also wants to get aboard. But when the Act was announced to the press, Stephen Fox collapsed, and has been doing so at speaking engagements ever since. After a battery of medical tests, Chester asked the FBI to look into the possibility that Fox is being sabotaged - so Gregor is to attend the seminar. Gregor, in turn, asked Bennis to accompany him as cover; with her looks and background, she's just the type of campaign contributor Fox would like, and Gregor can use an intelligent friend on this.
If the attacks are real and not some weird psychological symptom, how are they being staged, and what are they intended to accomplish?
Patchen, Fox's mistress, can't think her way out of a paper bag; she thinks it's Fox's destiny to leave Janet for her, and that only Chester is blocking her. Did she stage Fox's attacks as a foolish ploy to drive Chester away? (While she alone of the suspects has no clinic connections, she plays at Wicca, complete with a pharmacopoeia of herbal preparations.) Was Patchen the last straw for Janet - or for Victoria, Janet's mother? Did Claire Markey, despite her increasing dissatisfaction with her job and clients, realize that Chester planned to write the Act to include competency exams - despite all her lobbying to the contrary, and his acceptance of her funding? Or has the wayward senator found a new playmate? Or Chester, Debrett, or Fox could be up to something complex, either with Chester as mastermind or one of the others pulling an independent boneheaded play.
Naturally, Gregor and the Oyster Bay police find themselves with a murder on their hands before the fireworks begin.
The setting - Victoria Harte's Oyster Bay mansion - helps make this book memorable, and Great Expectations, in turn, is tied to its owner. Victoria Harte is 'the Last of the Movie Stars'; she travels with an entourage of twelve, gets involved with various liberal causes but isn't expected to stop wearing fur, and has an excellent spy system. Her chief concern is Janet, and how Janet is affected by Stephen Fox's shenanigans - which are in turn dictated by Dan Chester and Kevin Debrett, Stephen's closest friends, and by his mistress of the moment, rather than by any consideration for his wife.
One of the most interesting subplots is what's going on with Bennis Hannaford, one of the major supporting characters in the series. Bennis is falling apart for the second time in her life - her mother's MS will kill her before Labor Day, and with her death, the last of Bennis' childhood home will be gone. Two of her siblings are coming up for trial - one for insider trading, the other for murdering three other members of her family - and a third sibling is in rehabilitation. She's been coping by spending too much money and throwing herself into life on Cavanaugh Street, even though she lives in Boston and is working through the proofs of her next novel. She'd rather be *anywhere* than Philadelphia.
Even though during her *first* major crisis, years ago, she was involved with Stephen Fox.
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