Not a Creature Was Stirring on the Main Line in Bryn Mawr

Not a Creature was Stirring by Jane Haddam
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This first book in the Gregor Demarkian mystery series was published back in 1991. My friend Sarah told me about these books and I was delighted with them. Great plots, interesting suspects, amusing supporting cast, a holiday connection. And something you don't find in many mysteries, two characters who aren't just cardboard. One of them is the former FBI detective, Demarkian, who is still mourning the death of his much-beloved wife and regrets having retired early; he misses his job.

He has moved back to the neighborhood in Philadelphia where he grew up, a small Armenian enclave that has come through the years without decaying or losing its ethnic qualities. He finds there many of the people he knew 30 years ago and at first he is uncomfortable at the old women who manage to find out everything that is happening in the neighborhood. (This is not an Armenian thing - in the small Yankee/French Canadian town where I grew up people knew what you were going to do before you did it.)

The other particularly interesting character in the series is Father Tibor, the priest at the Armenian Catholic Church. He is wise and saintly, in as realistic a portrayal of such a man as I've read anywhere. He has lived under three repressive regimes and reads in six languages. He has books piled up everywhere in his apartment behind the church. He is always there when anyone needs help but he doesn't interfere with anybody. Whenever Demarkian begins to think Tibor is too naive, Father Tibor shows that it is perhaps Demarkian who is the naive one. The warmth and charm of this character is deeply engaging.

And the mystery? The father of a large and very wealthy Main Line family is found dead just moments before Demarkian arrives for dinner after having been invited in a mysterious manner by the dead man. He finds there the Bryn Mawr police chief, John Henry Newman Jackman, a man he has worked with in the past, a very good detective but over his head in this case.

If you pay very close attention you can figure out who's killing whom and why. But it isn't obvious and the clues are cleverly interwoven with the herring.

2012 No 8