Sun 2 Apr 2017
JANE HADDAM – Bleeding Hearts. Gregor Demarkian #9. Bantam, hardcover, 1994; paperback, 1995.
Nobody’s ever admitted to me they like these, but this is the ninth so I know somebody besides me reads them. This is the Valentine’s Day entry in her “holiday” series.
Gregor Demarkian is the retired head of the FBI “serial killer” branch, now living back in the Armenian neighborhood of Philadelphia where he grew up. One of the neighborhood ladies, a plain woman in her late fifties, meets and gets giddy over a once-noted psychologist who four years ago was tried for the murder of his wife and found innocent. Things get a bit sticky at a party she throws for him when his ex-mistress shows up, sending Demarkian’s friend to her room in tears.
The psychologist follows her, and shortly thereafter he is found stabbed to death on the floor, and her standing over him with a dagger in her hand — the same dagger that was found by the body of his wife.
The Demarkian books are predictably formulaic in their structure. First there’s the introduction of the players who’ll be the murdered, murderer, and suspects, then the crime, then the investigation and eventual solving of the crime by Demarkian, “the Armenian Hercule Poirot.”
I like them because the cast is usually interesting and I enjoy Haddam’s leisurely, multi-viewpoint way of telling the story. Like the previous books it’s nothing major, but enjoyable; reading one is sort of like putting on a comfortable old shoe that you’re a little ashamed of.
Bibliographic Note: There have been so far twenty more Demarkian books. The most recent one was Fighting Chance, published in 2014.
April 3rd, 2017 at 6:24 am
I’ve tried one a couple of times but couldn’t get interested.
April 3rd, 2017 at 9:32 am
Jane Haddam’s books have come up for discussion on this blog several times now. After she spotted a review I wrote of one of her books, she posted a response over on her own blog.
My complaint was that there was little to no detection done in the book I read, and I quote from her reply:
“Now, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that the author of the review/blog linked above is male. In my experience, men tend to like lots of plot and to see nothing but wasted time and space in a concentration on character.
“But even so, even most plot-besotted readers should have noticed by now that there really isn’t anything new in the way of plot out there, and hasn’t been for years. There isn’t much new in the way of detection, either. I’ve been watching my way through four and a half seasons of the old Perry Mason, and I can see the plots coming down the pike as predictably as summer follows spring.
[…]
“I guess what I’m saying here is that I can’t imagine reading a mystery for the plot, and I really have no particular use for reading one for the continuing characters, who are either going to be boring as hell in no time at all or are going to have the kind of overwrought lives that make Dark Shadows look like a children’s story.
“Apparently, however, a lot of people out there are innocent of the idea that you might want to read mystery fiction for any other reason.â€
Here’s the link to my reply to her: https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=2068
A long discussion in the comments followed, including several from Jane Haddam herself.
April 3rd, 2017 at 9:11 pm
I just wasn’t the audience for these though in answer to Ms Haddam’s suggestion there are dozens of women writers whose work I rate as high as any man.
No plot and no mystery and no inner life for continuing characters doesn’t leave a lot for a mystery novel, but it is fair to say that is what I didn’t like about her work.
April 4th, 2017 at 1:03 am
I am a character over plot. The mystery rarely means more to me than motivation for the characters to move the story along.
Book sales for the romantic suspense tend to support the woman reader love for characters over plot. I find it is interesting so few men write in that genre while so many women such as Megan Abbott and Christa Faust can write hardcore crime novels. But then Faust seems more interested in character over crime. So the plot versus character seems to exist in all forms of crime/mystery fiction.
I have been trying to find my favorite mystery genre – mystery lite. A look at my top ten favorite writers can better describe what I mean than any term – Ross Thomas, Vince Kohler, Norbert Davis, Gregory McDonald, Jasper Fforde, Paco Ignico Taibo II, Douglas Adams, Dashiell Hammett, Ross H. Spencer, and Craig Rice. It is a mix of old, humor, foreign, crime. thriller and yet I can see a common thread – character is focused over plot.
As I read all the discussion with Haddam I kept thinking how common her style of mystery was. It favors characters over plot but there is a crime to create conflict. Where does this fit in the traditional vs hardboiled?
It is not from the school of Hammett and Chandler, nor from the school of Christie and Doyle. Who is the father (or mother) of this genre blend?
These are the type of books I see less of as the romance suspense of the Janet Evanovichs type writers take over the interest of the “female” mystery reader.
I am not sure if you can divide the debate over plot vs character into man vs woman. But I wonder how many writers exist today writing plot driven mysteries vs how many focus on character.
April 4th, 2017 at 7:31 am
I don’t know the answer to your last question, Michael, since I read so little of what is published today as mystery fiction. The ones I do buy, hoping to read someday, fall into the category of plot-driven mysteries, but I seldom buy books that everyone else is.
If there’s no mystery to be solved, one worth mentioning, not just incidental, I can’t read it, no matter how interesting the characters are.
Your long comment deserves a longer reply than this, I know, but I would rather not try to generalize a better response off the top of my head based on only what interests me.
Have you ever read a book by Jane Haddam? I’d like to know what your reaction is. I meant to read another of hers myself after that long exchange we had about her books on this blog a while back, but I don’t think I have. Most of the people who commented here, as I recall, did not especially care for her books. Barry Gardner is the only reviewer I know of who liked them. But I can’t make that jibe with the fact that Haddam’s books must have their fans, otherwise the series of Demarkian books would not have sold so well and continued for as long as it has.
April 4th, 2017 at 1:42 pm
Well I’ll just add that I’ve only read one of her books, and didn’t enjoy it enough to read another.
April 5th, 2017 at 1:16 am
Steve, I don’t remember reading any books by Haddam, nor likely. Just not my style. I read a variety of books in the past but time to finish my to be read pile is getting shorter so I focus on them.
Don’t worried about replying to one of my long winded comments. I find it harder to shut up then go on and on and on.
I am curious to what you think a plot first is. My favorite writers have plots but never let them get in the way of the characters. Even Hammett is more interested in his characters than the crime. The puzzle form of mysteries focus on plot and bore me because I have little interest in whodunit but care more about the characters and who they are.
April 5th, 2017 at 11:57 am
That’s easy. Authors who write “plot first” stories are the ones who bore you. But I’ll take Agatha Christie as a plot-oriented writer, as I think most people would.
She was (and still is) very popular, but I think the reason her puzzles are so good is that her characters are so well drawn. And that’s what makes her puzzles and twists work so well. If a writer does a puzzle story and the characters are stick figures, the book is going to be a dud, no matter who tries to read it.
On the other hand, a mystery focusing on characters without a plot simply isn’t a mystery, but a mainstream novel.
April 5th, 2017 at 2:33 pm
Majority of authors “bore” me, especially the older I get.
The discussion over Haddam seem to mimic those we have over the popular romantic suspense paperbacks. Suspense can exist without mystery and focus on characters in danger with the lightest of plots. Haddam pointed out her plot and mystery – there was a crime and the detective works to solve it. She admitted she paid little attention to that and was more interested in the characters. Gee, that sounds like many of our best selling paperbacks.
The romantic suspense (mystery) plots are the relationship between the woman and the men and it is a mystery if the action is caused by a crime or mystery. These are the paperbacks with cute puns in the title, have a single heroine with a quirky profession and a sense of humor. She solves the crime but spends more time making jokes and trying to decide whether to pick the too good guy or the interesting bad boy. There is a plot in there somewhere but no one cares. It is the journey readers enjoy not the solution.
I grew up reading Christie (a favorite of my Mom who likes traditional mysteries – so much for women picking characters over plot), but once I read Hammett I never went back. Finally characters I found interesting rather than stock cliches.