Skeleton Key

January 31, 2000
In Haddam's 15th entry in her entertaining Gregor Demarkian series (Deadly Beloved, etc.), Bennis Hannaford discovers the murdered body of debutante heiress Kayla Anson during a Halloween visit to the Anson estate in a posh area of Connecticut. Bennis summons her lover, Gregor, retired head of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, from Philadelphia to help the local police. These logistics out of the way, Haddam settles into another clever plot-driven village cozy. Two more people are murdered: publicity-hungry Zara Anne Moss, who said she saw the killer, and Margaret Anson, Kayla's vengeful, money-hungry mother. Gregor studies area maps and interviews locals to separate clues from elaborate red herrings: a telephone pole knocked over, a stolen Jeep smashed in the Fairchild Family Cemetery and a skeleton from a nearby museum left on the caretakers' porch. Haddam excels at showing the chilling gulf between the arrogant wealthy and the climbers desperate to join them. One of her most complex characters is penniless divorc e Sally Martindale. Humiliated by her bookkeeping job at the exclusive Swamp Tree Country Club, Sally embezzles from members' accounts, foolishly hoping that a gambling win will restore her status among club members. In an anomalous subplot, Bennis is stricken with pneumonia and Gregor insists that she stop smoking. Haddam's well-meaning message about the perils of tobacco seems shoehorned into an otherwise smoothly running mystery marked by lively characters, good descriptions and enough misdirection to keep a reader's interest high. (Feb.) FYI: Jane Haddam is the pseudonym of Oriana Papazoglou.

February 1, 2000
Connecticut police consult series sleuth and ex-FBI agent Gregor Demarkian when Bennis Hannaford (Demarkian's love interest) discovers the body of Kayla Anson, a beautiful young heiress. Demarkian closely analyzes clues, reconstructs Kayla's last days, looks for her motives in those who knew her, and still worries about Hannaford's persistent racking cough. As usual, Haddam spends a lot of time developing complex secondary characters: Kayla's uptight, unfeeling mother; her promiscuous, wayward cousin; a recently unemployed, unhusbanded embezzler; and Kayla's older, off-and-on boyfriend. Demarkian closes in, but not before more victims appear. A sophisticated style, excellent delivery, and riveting plot make this an excellent choice for all collections.

January 1, 2000
Here's the fifteenth mystery featuring FBI agent-turned-sleuth Gregor Demarkian, and it's a real winner. When Bennis Hannaford, Gregor's lover, discovers the murdered body of a young debutante, she drags Gregor out of his comfortable Philadelphia apartment to Litchfield County, Connecticut, where he finds an assortment of potential suspects and a town that isn't as peaceful as it pretends to be. Like an Agatha Christie novel, this story features a large cast of characters, any one of whom could conceivably be a killer. Also like a Christie novel, the story is propelled more by dialogue than by action. Haddam (who lives in Litchfield County) has created a very realistic tale that's sure to grab readers from the first page. Unlike many mysteries that feature large casts of would-be murderers, the solution to this one isn't obvious from the get-go, and readers will have lots of fun trying to guess whodunit. A fine entry in a fine series. ((Reviewed January 1 & 15, 2000))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)