A Great Day for the Deadly (Mass Market Paperback)

As it happens, the characters don't just stay put on Cavanaugh Street and wait for Gregor to get a new case. Bennis Hannaford is 6 weeks into her new novel, and won't leave her apartment until she has a draft. (She *does* have to work for a living, remember - her father disinherited her and all her sisters years ago. All she has is what she's made herself. She's just good at it.) Tibor's teaching another class at Independence College (see _Quoth the Raven_); the rest are on vacation in warmer climates, since it's late February. Gregor, feeling cast adrift, has gone to an FBI convention in New York...where the Archdiocese of New York finds him on behalf of John Cardinal O'Bannion of Colchester.

Brigit Ann Reilly, a postulant in the Motherhouse of the Sisters of Divine Grace, was found dead in the local public library, covered with live snakes - but she died of hemlock poisoning, and the snakes are de-fanged pets. Do they belong to Josh O'Malley, the young gigolo who married Miriam Bailey, the bank president? (If there are such things as trophy husbands, Josh is no prize.) Or Miriam herself, a 60-ish pillar of the Catholic Church who buys toys for Josh, e.g. a menagerie, a Ferrari...but doesn't show any other signs of a mid-life crisis... Or to Sam Harrigan, the Fearless Epicure, an old friend of Bennis' with an outrageous cooking show? (And a yen for Glinda Daniels, the librarian...)

Maryville is gearing up for St. Patrick's Day, a major holiday in a town founded by Irish immigrants, especially now that the founder of the Sisters' order is on her way to becoming the first Irish-American saint. (Even Father Doherty's parish of South American immigrants are joining the party. Why? "Someday there will be enough of us here, we will have a celebration for St. Rose of Lima. Since we have always helped them, they will have to help us.") Miriam's assistant, Don Bollander, makes the mistake of wishing that Maryville could become another Lourdes - but be careful what you wish for...

A few of the Sisters we met in _Precious Blood_ only briefly have bigger roles here, especially Reverend Mother General, "a cross between Queen Elizabeth I and Medusa," as Father Doherty puts it (he's never dared to look her in the face). Father Doherty himself is an impressive figure - a doctor from a wealthy family, who discovered a vocation after an unhappy marriage, ended by his wife's death in a drunk-driving accident.

_A Great Day for the Deadly_ actually has a locked-room situation at one point, and as Gregor says, "There just isn't any such thing as a locked-room mystery." Gregor's favorite fictional detective is Nero Wolfe, who gets to just sit and eat, and doesn't have to listen to lectures about cholesterol. He *hates* John Dickson Carr, and says that at least Mrs. Christie had the good sense never to write a locked-room mystery. (Bennis gives him books from time to time, and it's funny to watch him react to them - see especially _A Stillness in Bethlehem_, where she lives to regret giving him a biography of J. Edgar Hoover.)

I particularly like Haddam's character development. (Yes, I've read other amazon reviews from people who hate it.) The witnesses and families of victims in her stories don't just pick up as though nothing happened; they have to live with the consequences. Cardinal O'Bannion's colleagues, including Tibor, are worried that he's been making himself sick after what happened in _Precious Blood_ the previous year, and Sister Scholastica is still haunted by the deaths of childhood friends in that story.

If you think Bennis is the exception to this rule, after _Not a Creature Was Stirring_ and her mother's death from multiple schlerosis, you just haven't been reading the right books in the series. See especially _Act of Darkness_.

Note that this story takes place before Armenia declared independence during the breakup of the Soviet Union. The changes on Cavanaugh Street begin in the next book, _A Feast of Murder_.

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