Corpus Christmas

No. 6 in the Sigrid Harald series. In this installment, Sigrid attends a Christmas party at the Erich Breul House in Manhattan, a small 19th century art museum where her lover, Oscar Nauman, has reluctantly agreed to mount a retrospective of his work. The guests include trustees and docents, supporters of the arts, agents and gallery owners. A good many tensions and undercurrents can be detected among these worthies, and one of them is bound to end up dead. Sure enough, after everyone (or almost everyone) has gone home, the newest and nastiest member of the Board of Trustees is found at the bottom of the basement stairs with a shattered skull. Sigrid leads the investigation, which takes an unexpected turn or two as she and her team show more gradually eliminate suspects and zero in on the killer. As usual, it's interesting to watch Sigrid work, to trip around NYC with her, and to watch her coming out of her shell bit by bit as her relationship with Nauman advances. show less

Just before Christmas, an art historian is murdered while working in the Breul House, the mansion of a rich Victorian art collector whose New York house has been turned into an art museum. The murder occurs after a party at the museum, which just happened to be attended by Margaret Maron’s New York Police detective Lieutenant Sigrid Harald. She is there because she is romantically involved with a famous painter whom the museum is courting. If a retrospective of his work is shown there, the financially-strapped museum will get a big boost in attendance and donations.
This plot setup takes Margaret Maron a while to develop; in fact the murder doesn’t happen until page 100, more than a third of the way through the book. But it’s a show more rich setup in Maron’s hands because she has three different stories going at once. Almost century-old details about the Breul household, the art collecting of Erich Breul, and the wanderjahre of Sophie and Erich Breul’s son in Europe are told through letters and snippets of books about the house and its owners. Maron begins each chapter with one of these. The murder itself is tied up with the present life of the house as museum: its director, secretary, trustees, docents, and even the live-in janitor. And this story, because it involves the larger art world of collectors and galleries, connects with detective Harald’s lover, the abstractionist painter Oscar Nauman, as Harald gradually learns as she investigates. Maybe that’s four different stories. At any rate, the author has used the tried-and-true device of making the victim utterly despicable, so that not only are we happy to see him go, but he is so roundly hated that everyone has a motive. Among the suspects are the vain, incompetent director of Breul House, another curator who thinks the art in the place is all Victorian kitsch, an aging gallery owner and his attractive young partner, and a rich ship owner with plenty of his own secrets.
Corpus Christmas is the sixth in Margaret Maron’s books about Sigrid Harald. She has another mystery series featuring a judge named Deborah Knott, and these books are favorites of my wife. She suspects, and I do too, that Maron probably has more female than male readers. Her detective gets the mystery solved in time for Christmas, and the solution surprised me, anyway. show less

A very good entry in this solid and interesting series. Much about art, galleries, and museums, in particular, The Erich Breul House in its Christmas Finery. A meanspirited and unpopular trustee is found bludgeoned following a festive but disconcerting evening with the Board and Sigrid's favorite artist. Who wanted to kill the nudge was easy; just about everyone. But which one and why takes a while longer.

Sigrid Harald attends a party at the Breul House Museum with her artist lover Oscar Nauman. The next day the body of a art expert, Dr. Roger Stanley, is found at the bottom of a stars. The suspects early are two young men who are trying to hide their freindship in case it raises suspicions of a sexual nature. Maybe the docent who is never considered for the board of dirctors is taking revenge.

Well crafted plot but of interest to those who have met Sigrid before is the transformation from a dowdy, quiet woman to one who accepted advice on making herself more beautiful and social.

Synopsis: It's Christmas and the Erich Breul House is decorated for the season. The issue is that there isn't enough money coming in from tourism and they need some sort of boost to keep the historic house open. Oscar Nauman is convinced to let them display his paintings to pull in art lovers. At a party celebrating this decision, one of the directors, a smarmy newcomer, makes comments that upset and anger most of the other directors as well as one of the docents and the janitor. Later that night he's found dead. Sigrid has a long list of people to sort through and wonders just who is protecting who as she finds that none of the people were without a reason to kill the man.
Review: Another entertaining mystery with two extraneous side show more mysteries that don't add a lot to the story. Still, these are well written books. show less

I read this for a Christmas read and now I want to go back and read the entire Sigrid Harald series.

I read this some time ago. I ordered it again thinking that I hadn't read before. Within the first three pages I knew :)