FEAST OF MURDER [Mass Market Paperback]

The story opens with "The Death of Donald MacAdam", familiar with readers of NOT A CREATURE WAS STIRRING through his involvement with Bobby Hannaford's ill-planned financial shenanigans. MacAdam's now famous as the man who'll send most of the rest of his generation of Main Line financiers to jail after agreeing to testify. Now a pariah in the financial community, he's just had his contract bought out by Baird Financial (although it's being run from the inside by Bobby's soon-to-be-released cellmate, Jonathan Baird).

Then somebody decided to be rid of MacAdam permanently, by way of a little strychnine - not in his cocaine, which would've passed for stupidity on his part, but by means unknown. MacAdam's death is one of two murders in the story, and is introduced with a lot of emphasis, but then fades from view for an extended period, which gives the story a lumpy feel. The main story doesn't pursue any investigation of the death of Donald MacAdam, in fact, but a subsequent coming-home/Thanksgiving celebration by Baird after his release: a little trip on the PILGRIMAGE GREEN, Baird's personal replica of the MAYFLOWER, complete with dysfunctional family, business partners, and one Gregor Demarkian and his sidekick Bennis.

Thanksgiving, a time for families to get together with an emphasis on the dinner table, seems tailor-made for Cavanaugh Street, with its family atmosphere and deeply held belief in feeding widowers like Gregor and Tibor who can't be trusted with coffeemakers. Unfortunately, whenever the good ladies of Cavanaugh Street get together they try to matchmake as well as cook, so Gregor and Bennis opt out this year by accepting Baird's invitation to spend Thanksgiving aboard the PILGRIMAGE GREEN, supposedly to investigate leaks at Baird Financial.

The firm's security isn't the only thing with weaknesses in it.

Baird's also invited:

- his son Tony (about to switch from "finding himself" to working at Baird Financial, if he can pass scrutiny in a tough regulatory atmosphere)

- his brother Calvin, business partner (too detail-oriented to succeed professionally)

- Charlie Shay, business partner (whose capacity for details is confined to crosswords)

- Jon's trophy wife Sheila

- Jon's ex-wife Fritzie (amazing what a woman will agree to when her ex controls her income)

- Jon's nephew Mark Anderwahl, whose success depends on his wife's professional contributions

- Julie Anderwahl, head of PR, coping with an unexpected complication to the life of the dual career couple

Baird says early on, "What is it about me, my wives aren't unfaithful with other men, they're unfaithful with credit cards and diet programs". Most of this dysfunctional family are emotionally barren and obsessed with image, just in different ways. Sheila is a typical Haddam-style trophy wife, concentrating on material possessions, emotionally uninvolved with her husband except as he affects her public image. Fritzie, suffering from an eating disorder, doesn't have enough energy to think clearly. The older male members of the family have an assortment of failed marriages between them thanks to their focus on their careers, which mostly hasn't gotten them anywhere.

As usual with the early Gregor books, we don't see much of Cavanaugh Street itself in FEAST OF MURDER except at the beginning and end of the story. Set during the same year that Armenia declared its independence from the Soviet Union, FEAST OF MURDER is set back-to-back with A STILLNESS IN BETHLEHEM, and marks Cavanaugh Street's transition from a refurbished old neighbourhood of the grown children of immigrants back to an immigrant neighbourhood, as the influx of distant cousins from the old country begins sweeping in. Father Tibor, of course, is working too hard settling refugees (the reason he, Bennis, and Gregor go on holiday in the next book).

The most noticeable item marking this book as an early 1990s period piece, though, is that Baird Financial's corporate headquarters are in the World Trade Center.

On the good side, this was a fast and easy read. Haddam sometimes uses oddly phrased sentences in her other books but this wasn't as bogged down by that defect in her style.
Sadly, it doesn't give a first time Demarkian reader a sense of the Armenian-American former FBI agent's thought processes. I would start with Quoth the Raven or One to Die For or another one of the series if this is your first entry into the Demarkian books.
The ending was easily guessed ahead of time.
As Haddam uses holiday themes, this one is Thanksgiving. The one piece that bothered me most was the use of Puritan throughout the book when Pilgrims manned the Mayflower. There is a differnce between these Separatists. This use of "Puritan" detracted from my absorbtion in the book.

Gregor Demarkian resigned from the FBI when the illness and death of his wife brought his world down around him. Now he consults for police departments and others, solving murders by logic. In between he is supported by his friends, including Father Tibor of the local Armenian church and Bennis Day Hannaford, who can be stranger than the best-selling fantasy series she writes.

Gregor and Bennis accept an invitation for a trip on a replica of the Mayflower. It is a very accurate replica, even to the lack of modern sanitation. What is not true to history is the maze of power games and sexual betrayal, and once aboard Gregor and Bennis are made witnesses to a murder. With no control of the situation or the evidence, Gregor must find a way to explain the murder, and to bring the controlling killer to justice.

I count this as the first of a number of weaker stories by Haddam. It is still worth an evening, but I did not find in it the pure pleasure of Precious Blood or A Stillness in Bethlehem. But it does help develop the relationship between Gregor and Bennis. I find this important; if you do, you will want to read the book.

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