Customer Reviews

Not a Creature Was Stirring: A Gregor Demarkian Holiday Mystery

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After losing his wife Elizabeth to cancer, Gregor has taken early retirement from the FBI, and has returned to his old neighbourhood in Philadelphia in time for Christmas. Just as he's adapting to the urban renewal that has revamped Cavanaugh Street, he finds that his old reputation won't leave him alone...

Father Tibor, Cavanaugh Street's Armenian Orthodox parish priest, has been approached by Robert Hannaford, with a proposition for Gregor. If Gregor will attend a family dinner at Engine House, Hannaford's mansion on the Main Line, Hannaford will make a generous donation to Father Tibor's church. Why would an old-money, elderly financier want an expert on poisons and serial murder to attend a quiet Christmas dinner with his wife and grown children?

Gregor's boredom with his retirement is cured, as he reaches Engine House to find the police investigating Hannaford's murder.

This is the first Demarkian Holiday Mystery (Christmas) and introduces Bennis Hannaford (one of Robert's daughters) and her dysfunctional family. The cast of characters of Cavanaugh Street introduced here includes Father Tibor (who escaped from the Soviet Union in the bad old days of the 1980s) and Donna Moradanyan. Donna's boyfriend, Peter, has disappeared since Donna became pregnant, so Gregor is enlisted to find Peter for her as the Hannaford case unfolds.

There are a number of interesting subplots, not necessarily related to the murder; at least one for each of Hannaford's seven children. Anne Marie, the only one of the seven still living at Engine House, is falling apart while taking care of their mother, who is dying of multiple schlerosis. Chris and Bobby might both qualify as compulsive gamblers, in different ways, while Teddy has gambled (and lost) that his university's faculty would never find out that he's been plagiarizing his students' work. And so on...

Haddam (a.k.a. Orania Papazoglou) concentrates on character development in this volume, particularly Bennis' family background (which is essential to the plot). If necessary, you can read the other books first, since she's careful not to name the killer in the other volumes of the series, even when discussing the events of this volume, but this one really should be read first. Cavanaugh Street changes over time, since the breakup of the Soviet Union and the consequent liberation of Armenia as an independent nation occurred while the earlier volumes were being written, and a number of immigrants move to the neighbourhood as a result.

Should definitely be read before _Feast of Murder_ and _Bleeding Hearts_, since a few of the suspects for Robert Hannaford's murder can be eliminated if you've read them prior to _Not a Creature Was Stirring_.

"Not A Creature Was Stirring", by Jane Haddam (copyright in the name "Orania Papazoglou")is the first book in her Gregor Demarkian series. I had previously read "Hardscrabble Road", which is well down the line, and which I enjoyed a lot.

Demarkian is introduced as the recently retired former head of the Behavioral Sciences Department of the FBI, who had gone into a two-year slump following the death of his wife. When it occurred to him that he had to get his feet moving, on a whim he moved back into the small Armenian immigrant community in which he had grown up. This is important because that community, "Cavanaugh Street" in Philadelphia, is one of the more interesting characters in the book.

The plot revolves around Demarkian's becoming involved with the Hannaford family, an old money Main Line family which is singularly dysfunctional, and in which, over the Christmas holiday period, a group of murders occur. As the events proceed, the mystery and the peculiarities of the family reinvigorates Demarkian, and starts renewing his interest in life.

What charm the book has comes from the inhabitants of Cavanaugh Street, and their small-town caring for each other. Haddam is a good writer, and appears to have an interesting mind. I intend to read further in the series, even though I have a problem with this book.

That problem is that there appears to be an inconsistency between the facts given to the reader, and an important foundational element of the plot, which nullifies the basis for the solution of the case. This nagged at me throughout the book. (When you get to that part of the book, consider: What would the annual income on $400,000,000 be , after taxes, expenses, and a certain amount of frivolity, accumulated over a ten year period? Haddam asks us to believe it would be zero. Not possible, particularly starting in 1980, when the ten year T Bill rate was 10%.)

Nonetheless, the book is worth reading on its own, and particularly as the introduction to the characters who will be ongoing in the series. I do have to say that the Hannafords were a bit much, and mostly gave me a pain where I can't scratch and a pill won't help.

The first of the Gregor Demarkian stories, and one of the better ones. I don't know whether to put it in the first or second tier because it reads a little slowly for my taste. The puzzle is sound although the actual villian was one of my prime suspects by the end. Still, it's one of Haddam's stronger mysteries. If, like me, you find it promising but not perfect, please try Precious Blood or A Stillness in Bethlehem next.

This is the first Gregor Demarkian mystery. I discovered Jane Haddam at my local branch of my city's public library. I started with number 16 (Skeleton Key) and had only read two of the earlier novels prior to buying this one used. The rest were not available at the library nor at my local used book store.

The book arrived yesterday afternoon. I finished reading her latest (Wanting Sheila Dead) and started this one yesterday evening. I stayed up most of the night reading it until I fell asleep with the light on. The first thing I did this morning was finish it. (I am a slow reader because, unlike my husband who speed reads, I read every word.)

Because this is the first in the series, it is a must read for fans. There is a diagram of the Engine House (used in Wanting Sheila Dead) in this book. We are introduced to nearly all of the regular repeating characters in the series in this book. It has a very large cast but the characters are well formed.

One of the later books I had read DOES reveal who the killer is (the one where the killer is executed) so unfortunately I was a little cheated in knowing who did it prior to reading it. However, I still found it gripping.

Highly recommended for Haddam fans. A publisher should offer this again, either as a Kindle book or a pb reprint.

I have read many of her other books and wanted to read the first to see how. it all started and how everyone met. I was not disapointed. I enjoy this series very much and look forward to reading all of them