Dear Old Dead (Gregor Demarkian, #9) in Play Book Tag

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Jun 30, 2024 Theresa rated it really liked it

Shelves: detective, series, steeplechase, new-york, contemporary-mystery, dragons-spotted-in-the-wild, harlem

Gregor Demarkian, retired FBI agent who has been spending his retirement assisting in solving a few murders here and there, is leaving his Philadelphia Armenian immigrant neighborhood for NYC, East Harlem and the Sojourner Truth Health Center specifically. There's been a murder and the Cardinal Archbishop of New York has requested his 'unofficial' assistance in solving the murder of the billionaire financial partner to the Health Center. The Catholic Archdiocese of New York is the other signific Gregor Demarkian, retired FBI agent who has been spending his retirement assisting in solving a few murders here and there, is leaving his Philadelphia Armenian immigrant neighborhood for NYC, East Harlem and the Sojourner Truth Health Center specifically. There's been a murder and the Cardinal Archbishop of New York has requested his 'unofficial' assistance in solving the murder of the billionaire financial partner to the Health Center. The Catholic Archdiocese of New York is the other significant financial partner. Gregor has spent time in NYC when working for the FBI, but this takes him into a whole new side -- the poverty and gang wars of East Harlem, the homeless problem, the drugs, the abandoned neighborhoods the marked the early 90s in some neighborhoods. Gregor does eventually identify the murderer in a manner that provides sufficient evidence to convict, but not before there's another murder, a twice attempted murder of a third person, and we spend a lot of time with the eclectic group that are connected to the Health Center from its charismatic leader to the too young girl who is trying to leave the world of prostitution behind.

I really enjoyed this a great deal, and not just because of the setting - one quite familiar to me and today quite different from what it was in the early 90s before the city crackdown on gangs and gentrification spread uptown. It's a time when you couldn't get a yellow cab to take you to Harlem, AIDS was ravaging the gay community, Times Square and vicinity belonged to peep shows, porn shops and prostitutes, tatty cartoon characters, gangs ruled the poor areas. It's a good plot, kept me guessing which is always nice, and the way Father's Day was interwoven was extremely well done - from references to the different 'father roles' that exist or don't among the impoverished, priests as fathers, to celebrations, sales, and even contests. The author didn't just pick a holiday and stick a murder mystery around it; she built it into the plot. I also like how the immigrant Armenian community features, its denizens, culture, religion as it provides great color to the stories, different perspectives and even comic relief.

I did feel that there are a couple of threads hanging still at the end, and there were a couple of characters I wish we knew how they faired after. Perhaps they pop up in a later book? I don't it. But on the other hand, it's good that the author made me care. There were a few geographic mistakes made in Manhattan that were truly inexcusable, but in truth, Haddam really captured NYC at the very beginning of the 90s.

I used to read these, and her other series with a romance novel writer as MC, as they were published, but just about the time this was published, I stopped keeping up, and then fell far behind. I did that with a lot of series at that time in my life. My profession was demanding of my time and brain pushing my reading a super light fiction rut. I'm so glad to have picked Haddam up again. Should keep me quite busy as there are 30 in the series now.

Steeplechase - Summer Celebration - Father's Day ...more

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Jan 28, 2010 Christina T marked it as to-read

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Sep 18, 2019 Lindy-Lane marked it as to-read

Shelves: g-myst-czyy-thrl, abyxsince2019-ctdwn, a-920-ctdwn

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