Xmas Scenes: Murder Among the Rich

 We’re into December, so it’s time for the annual Clothes in Books trope of Christmas in Books – seasonal scenes from random books, for no better reason than I like looking for the pictures, and I and some readers find them cheery and Xmas-y (particularly, of course, those featuring murders and other miseries)

Many of the entries  - this year and in the past – were suggested by clever readers: so if you have a favourite please do let me know and I will try to use it

Not a Creature was Stirring by Jane Haddam

published 1990

 The house was decked out for Christmas – the wreath on the outside panel of the door; the bowls of holly on the foyer tables; the delicate crystal angels hanging from invisible threads from all the ceilings…

 

This was the first of Jane Haddam’s Gregor DeMarkian mysteries.  I can see from my records that I read the first five books in the series over a couple of weeks in 1993 – I was visiting the US and scooping up new crime authors as fast as I could, trying one out in my hotel room and then going back to the bookstore to buy more when I found an author I liked. And I loved these books. I kept reading them for years – although in the end I had a few notes: ‘series getting a bit bogged down’. That was around the time I started the blog, and explains the quite surprising fact that there is only one of this series been featured in full – Precious Blood – though there is an entry on a standalone book by the same author Charisma by Orania Papazoglou, also about nuns. 

This book was mentioned in a list of Christmasrecommendations, and Haddam has featured in a couple of theme entries, and also in a Guardianarticle I wrote on nuns in books.

So that reflects my manic interest in nun books – Haddam features religion a lot, and there are plenty of nuns as well as an Armenian priest, but the settings of the books are not wholly religious and are very varied. All the early ones were described as Holiday Mysteries – set around Thanksgiving, 4^th July, Halloween and so on. I guess she ran out of holidays in the end, and no bad thing I think – it is very difficult to describe the books without making them sound cozy, but they are not cozies. There are now an astonishing 30 books in the series, and I have read 20 of them. I will probably carry on reading a few more from time to time, but I have also started re-reading from the beginning.

I am always surprised they are not better-known, either in the UK or the US. Here they are patchily available on Kindle. They don’t seem to feature much in the crime blogging world – although this is yet another taste that I share with Tracy at Bitter Tea and Mystery, we have discussed them from time to time, and it was her reading one of the more recent ones, Wanting Sheila Dead, that pushed me into looking again.

They all start the same way:  a long introductory section, the prologue, where we are introduced to a lot of different characters and follow their thoughts. That will likely include victims, culprits and suspects. We learn a lot of detail about their lives. When the book proper begins (though the prologue can easily be 40 pages or more) we get Gregor, our unauthorised ex-FBI man, and his friends, living in the centre of Philadelphia. A way is found to get him on board to solve the crime, and away we go. The books are complex, with many plot strands and a lot of consideration of modern life, philosophy, right and wrong. I enjoyed them very much, and admire the work Haddam put into them.

This one introduces the Hannaford family, as dysfunctional as any crime novel could hope for: rich posh and apparently all hating each other. Bennis Hannaford is one of seven siblings, so I don’t think it is a spoiler to say that she will become a series regular, as it still leaves a lot of potential suspects and victims. Not a Creature almost prefigures the TV drama Succession in its look at the rich, reassuring us all that we are better off not having too much money. It wouldn’t make us happy. (Haddam lays into the very rich in quite a few other books in the series too.)

The story also bears out my thesis that crime books are the only place where children at Christmas are not welcome: crime authors go to exceptional lengths to make sure there are none in the house: as by now expected, the new generation is missing.

The murder family live in an enormous house, and there are two plans at the beginning of the book. This time I tried to follow people as they moved around, but I have to say – it didn’t work, rooms weren’t where they should have been, I couldn’t make sense of the layout… I don’t usually bother with that kind of thing, so I won’t try again.

But  I have had enormous pleasure from this series over the years. and I strongly recommend it.

The picture is from my much-loved Florida Memories site (see more here) and shows the Christmas tree in the Governor’s House in 1990, and seemed just right for the doomed Hannaford household.