Dear Old Dead (1994)

#10 in the Gregor Demarkian series.

Dr. Michael Pride runs a health clinic in Harlem, NY, where he is almost literally up to his elbows in blood treating members of two rival gangs who are settling their territorial dispute with assault rifles. Obivoulsy, this is not a good time for Charles van Straadt, newspaper mogul and main supporter of the Sojourner Truth Health Clinic, to arrive for a conference. All four of Straadt's grandchildren are at the clinic; he requires that they put in a two-year stint volunteering if they wish to be included as his heirs. As Michael returns to his office after hours in surgery, he finds van Straadt already there--in the last throes of dying from strychnine poisoning.

Suspicion falls on Michael as the only apparent one who had the access to strychnine. But not only does Michael have no motive, but the police are also hampered by Michael's reputation as something of a secular saint, given the work he does for free for the poor of Harlem.

Desperate for reasons ofhis own to have the situation resolved, the Cardinal Archbishop of New York puts in a call to the Cardinal Archbishop of Colchester who in turn calls his old friend, Fr. Tibor Kasparian of Holy Trinity Armenian Christian Church on Philadelphia's Cavanaugh Street. And that is why Gregor Demarkian finds himself packing his bags for a visit to New York to assist in what way he can in solving the murder. Initially, he is bafffled; there are plenty of suspects but it seems impossible for anyone but Michael to have murdered van Straadt. But after another murder and an attempted murder, Demarkian manages to put it all together and suss out the murderer.

Since this takes place in New York, there is no real contribution by the Cavanaugh St. gang except for brief appearances by Bennis Hannaford at the beginning and the end. Which is too bad, because this plot is a little thin and could have used the zaniness of the Armenian-American community to spice up the story.

The writing itself also seems a little thin. Haddam makes effective use of long stretches of short declarative sentences that often add to the intended humor of a particular scene. But there are times in this book where that literary device seems strained.

Haddam usually has some sort of social agenda in her books; in Dear Old Dead, it is really Harlem itself and the conditions in which everyone--gang members, working poor, destitute, homeless, prostitutes--must survive. The fact that the clinic performs abortions is part of that picture; one character, who day after day protests with a sign, converts at the end, although we are not really told exactly how this happened. As mentioned, the plot is thin. Still, there is a fairly decent if naturally superficial look at Harlem as a place where wars break out regularly and cab drivers are afraid to go.

A little light even for a light-weight series, this is still a good read. ( )