Customer Reviews

Death of a Butterfly

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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.

"Death of a Butterfly" (1984) - In May, a young mother is found brutally bludgeoned on her kitchen floor. But her tragic death only highlights the scars this beautiful but cold, self-centered, and demanding woman left on those still alive. For as Lieutenant Harald quickly discovers, more than one person had a motive for killing Julie Richmond: her ex-husband and his pregnant girlfriend, financially unable to marry while Julie was alive; her childless next-door neighbors, who gave Julie's son the love she never could; or her criminally adept brother, whose relationship with his sister was strictly hate-hate. Now Sigrid must unravel a tangled web of hurt to find the one strand of pain raw enough enough to lead to murder.

On the personal front, Oscar Nauman keeps showing up at odd times, carrying her off to dinner, marching her around museums and galleries to remedy her abysmal ignorance of modern art, and appearing on her threshold with a weird assortment of groceries that he turned into gourmet meals in her heretofore soup-and-sandwich kitchen. By the end of the book she has even, albeit reluctantly, acquired a temporary roommate in the person of Roman Tremegra, an acquaintance of her mother's, plus she faces the need to find a new apartment by the time her lease expires August 1st (her building is going condo). All in all, lots of change is going on in Sigrid's life.

Another complex plot of a murder of an unsympathetic character, which opens the door to multiple suspects. I certainly didn't guess the murderer.

I have very little time to read and really dislike getting part of a book read and it's not going anywhere. This book, Death of a Butterfly was an enjoyable read with characters that acted like real people and had names that didn't blur into confusion. It was not high tension like Patricia Cornwall but a cleverly crafted mystery and glimpse of human foibles, besides.