Customer Reviews

Wanting Sheila Dead

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

 

 

Wanting Sheila Dead is Jane Haddam's (Orania Papazoglou's) latest Gregor Demarkian mystery with a murder and a bonus crime.

One-line review: Not Haddam's best, but very good nonetheless, and recommended to any lover of well-crafted fair-play mysteries.

The Gregor Demarkian stories combine detection with the long-running love affair between Gregor and Bennis Day Hannaford. Haddam falls short of the job that Dorothy Sayers did with Lord Peter and Harriet Vane, but that is no disgrace. That you can credibly mention the two authors in one breath speaks well of Haddam.

In the previous Gregor Demarkian story, Living Witness, Gregor and Bennis finally made their love affair official, married by the mayor in front of the local church on Cavenaugh Street. Bennis and Cavanaugh Street came into Gregor's life in the first of the series, Not A Creature Was Stirring. Now, as Gregor and Bennis are adjusting to a true marriage, this story returns to the roots of their relationship. The murder occurs in Engine House, the Hannaford family home, which Bennis will not visit and will not let go of. A second mystery occurs on Cavenaugh Street, where Gregor and Bennis live among the families with whom Gregor grew up.

The murder explores themes of celebrity (previously explored in Cheating at Solitaire) and of personal conduct, as well as the anonymity of modern society. The Cavenaugh Street mystery explores how civic order and community protect the community's members. And unlike her story Conspiracy Theory, there is no attempt to link the two crimes in the plot. The link is thematic.

Haddam uses Gregor as loudspeaker for her own views. Here she has him discuss how Agatha Christie uses the solving of a crime to reflect the restoration of civic order. This mirrors G. K. Chesterton's view that the solution of a detective story restores the moral order which has been disturbed by the crime. And while Haddam has described herself (on her website) as a liberal, one might almost discern a few conservative stripes in her approach to this issue.

None of this detracts from the story; it strengthens it if it does anything at all.

To understand this story's weaknesses, we must look at the strengths of Jane Haddam's best stories.

First, her best mysteries involve a sort of a keystone, a missing fact at which she (and Gregor) hint, often repeatedly. When this single fact drops into place, the logic of the solution explodes into clarity, like a note or riff in a great piece of music, one that you would never have expected, but once having heard it, can imagine no other. The stellar examples are Precious Blood and A Stillness in Bethlehem, but other stories (including True Believers) also have this. In Wanting Sheila Dead, such a fact exists for the secondary mystery, but it is found by chance, rather than by any logic that allows Gregor to assert that it must exist or what it might be. For the primary mystery, the key fact is given, and so it must not be trumpeted if the mystery is to be preserved. (John Dickson Carr discusses this sort of clue in his essay The Grandest Game in the World. I think he would approve of Haddam.)

Second, in Haddam's best stories the characters are presented one or two at a time, each in a setting that allows them to be presented memorably. Often they are contemplating themselves, their appearance, or their situation. Because many of the characters in Wanting Sheila Dead are introduced in a crowd, without flashbacks or side turnings, they cannot be so treated. They simply don't have time to reflect or act freely; they react to each other before any are well established, and those reactions simply can't make that many people memorable, at least not in this reader's mind.

This notwithstanding, Wanting Sheila Dead is a good addition to Jane Haddam's work and a good, solid read in the great tradition of the fair-play mystery.

I would agree with a number of the reviews listed here; this was a good read, but not the author's best.

For me, one of the problems (other have mentioned this in their reviews) is that many of the characters are introduced to the reader as a group and - try as I might - none had enough of an individuality to allow me to keep them straight. Having said that, I think it is also true that many actual reality show contestants (which, in the book, are the people involved in one of the mysteries) merge into each other, so much so that it is hard to keep them apart in one's mind.

I enjoyed the continuing story of Gregor and Bennis (and 'the house'), but felt that, while this wasn't a home run, it was a good run nonetheless, and I look forward to the next Demarkian mystery.

I don't read mysteries to figure out who did them before the end, I read them to meet intelligent problem-solving people and to encounter a slice of life that broadens my understanding and challenges me. That's a good thing, because I ceertainly wouldn't have known who the guilty suspects were in this one. Gregor Demarkian does, though:he's insight comes from his Agatha Christie-like understanding of the evils that men (and women) do, and his ability to focus on 'what happened', not 'what you mistakenly THINK happened in your desire to explain things.' All of the twists and turns of the plot, and the humorous and loving insight into the Armenian American community, are depicted in Haddam's graceful prose, always a pleasure to wrap around my mind.

I love Jane Haddam's books and have read all the Gregor Demarkian series. This book isn't up to her usual writing.

I found the characters shallow (even the ones that weren't supposed to be), but my biggest complaint is about the pacing. It was slow and took forever to get anywhere. In addition, there were descriptions that were repeated more than once. For example when Gregor was thinking about how Donna decorates all the buildings on the street - the same descriptions appeared later in the book.

I wanted to like this book. The set up was fun and I love Gregor and Bennis, but this was truly disappointing.

I've read a number of Jane Haddam's mysteries, and they've become increasingly more and more difficult to finish. Her prose was never especially disciplined, but it has become more and more unruly and meandering with every volume. Perhaps she believes that her characters' ubiquitous observations, both spoken and unspoken, lend them depth and provide commentary about the clashes and contradictions of traditional and contemporary cultures and communities, but they're not really that profound or original and instead come off as a kind of Andy Rooney-esque whining that distracts from the plot. Apart from that, her sentences are full of deadwood and simply do not flow well. I was actually a little surprised to discover that she is a writing instructor at a local college--well, actually, perhaps I shouldn't be.

Perhaps it was my frustration over her surprisingly amateurish writing style that made it difficult for me to follow the plot (or, actually, the twin plots, which were very tenuously connected indeed), but this one in particular seemed to be constructed very haphazardly. Demarkian seems to pluck the killer in the reality show murder plot entirely out of thin air, with a hasty and altogether implausible posthoc explication.

In one of his more relevant conversational digressions, Demarkian somewhat cryptically describes Agatha Christie's books as "metaphors" rather than mysteries, but as far as mystery writing goes, Haddam herself could learn quite a lot from Christie in terms of execution.

I was going to wait until this came out in paperback (because I am retired on a pension now) but, after reading the preview at the back of Living Witness, I was intrigued enough to splurge. Ironically, only two of the characters in the preview made it into the published version of Wanting Sheila Dead and the location and plot points of the novel changed.

The wonderful thing about Jane Haddam's latter mysteries is that she bases them on controversial issues. This novel is about B TV stars hosting reality programs (which are cheaper to produce than shows with actors) and the contestants that appear on the reality shows. It's also about older women who live alone becoming crime victims--this happened to my mom after my dad died and was uncovered by my sister who lives closest to her.

Gregor and Bennis have returned from their honeymoon in Jamaica. Gregor is not sure he wants to continue being a crime consultant but the Very Old Ladies on Cavanaugh waylay Gregor, Bennis, and Tibor into investigating something strange going on at the home of a reclusive other old lady on the street. Sophie is found in a coma lying in her foyer with a demented stranger named Lily standing over her. While working on discovering who Lily is (she has no fingerprints) and why Sophie remains in a coma, Gregor is asked by Bennis to investigate a shooting incident involving Sheila Dunham, host of America's Next Superstar reality show, who is renting the Hannaford family home (Engine House) for her next season.

Sheila Dunham is a woman who has made a career out of being rude for publicity. Why is someone shooting at her and not hitting her? Why was the body of a murdered unknown girl found in the house being used for the reality show? Was she killed by one of the staff working on the show or by one of the contestants? We are introduced to the characters of Sheila Dunham, her assistant Olivia, and about half of the final 14 contestants in the initial pages of the novel.

I enjoyed the interaction between the contestants: the nasty "leaders", the followers, and the ones who become victims. I have been watching weekly a reality show that is winding down to its winner. Jane Haddam's take on contestant dynamics has parallels in the real life reality show I've been watching.

Not one of her top 5 novels but still a 5 star read.

The Gregor Demarkian series (this is No. 25) is based in Philadelphia and focuses on the retired FBI agent known for his Armenian background. This latest foray finds Gregor involved in a shooting in a reality show being shot in a home belonging to his wife Bennis' family.
The show features an unpleasant woman, the Sheila of the title, who mistreats just about everyone. But she isn't the victim. In the house are a number of young women hoping to be chosen for instant superstardom.
It is one of Haddam's strengths that she can tell the back story for many of these contestants, and make them discrete and interesting to us.
A subplot deals with an elderly woman found unconscious in her home in Gregor's neighborhood. The local women want Gregor to investigate what happened. This fits right in since, as always, much of the book revolves around life on gentrifying Cavanaugh Street, the church and the residents.
More power to Haddam for giving us something comfortable and familiar, as well as new and exciting.

I have read all of Haddam's Gregor Demarkian novels and this is the first one that I considered worthless.

If you like the concept of reality TV, you might enjoy this book because one of the two plots concerns such a television show. But if you consider reality TV a complete waste of time, as I do, you will find that plot line about as riveting as watching paint dry.

The second plot line involves a woman with a tongue-twister of a name -- Sophie Mgrdchian. I am not making this up; in fact, I couldn't make it up. And no reader who is not Armenian could possibly figure out how to pronounce that name.

But Haddam seems to think it a great joke on the reader to constantly refer to that name. Sophie is never just Sophie -- she is always Sophie Mgrdchian. Karen is never just Karen -- she is always Karen Mgrdchian. Marco is never just Marco -- he is always --- well, you get the point. Nowhere does the author give a clue as to the pronunciation, so the reader is always tripping on this tongue-twister, and Haddam is probably having a great laugh.

If you want to read this novel, don't waste your money. Get it out of the library.

Repulsive Sheila Dunham is universally loathed by everyone. She is a nasty boor who deserves a special place in the Guinness Book of Records for TV firings and for being the most despicable celebrity. She went from reporter to guest personality to reality judge only to be canned by all as the queen of mean terrorizing anyone in her sphere. Recently she began her own successful reality show from her home in New Fenwick, Connecticut where everyone detests the woman too. Someone wants to do more than wish her to drop dead; in fact a woman shoots at her. Sheila's assistant Olivia Dahl hires Armenian-American detective Gregor Demarkian to investigate. He will soon find himself dealing with a murder that brings back a tragic moment in his own personal history.

Just back home in Philadelphia from his honeymoon with beloved Bennis, Armenian-American detective Gregor is also is hired by the Very Old Ladies to look into one of them, widow Sophie Mgrdchian. With another member Viola Vardanian, he enters Sophie's home to find a woman on the floor and another seemingly comatose nearby.

This is a great entry in one of the best long running series as the clues are out in the open, but easily missed due to brilliant red herrings and misdirection. Demarkian is terrific as he looks into his two cases while also showering attention on two women in his life: Bennis and Agatha Christie. Fans will relish this entry as Jane Haddam provides a fabulous whodunit that also takes a biting lampooning of so called realty TV.

Harriet Klausner

Spends too much time on one mystery and not enough on the more interesting one.