Great time for a re-read! Gregor finding his way in a bloody, complicated mystery. ( )

A retired FBI detective is offered $100,000 in cash by a wealthy eccentric to attend a Christmas Eve dinner at his country house outside Philadelphia. The detective arrives just as the man's battered body is discovered in his study. The detective, Gregor Demarkian is a credible stand-in for Hercule Poirot in this Agatha Christie like whodunnit. It's well-constructed with plenty of character development of the pool of suspects, the man's seven children. His invalid wife can be included too as a remote possibility. The local police call on Gregor's expertise as the mystery deepens with the suspicious deaths of two of the children. There's a real puzzle for Gregor to solve, which he does, and all is revealed in a dramatic conclusion.

Gregor's Armenia roots play a large part of his story. After the death of his wife from a lingering illness, he moved back to the Philadelphia Armenian neighbourhood where he grew up. There he is surrounded by a cast of oddball characters which support his sleuthing activity. An interesting side story about a young woman in the community is a good sidebar to the murder mystery.

This is the first book in a long series of Gregor Demarkian crime novels. Written in 1993 it shows its age, but the story is not stale. A good read which sets the stage for the rest of the series. ( )

Gregor Demarkian, former FBI agent who retired after the death of his wife, is invited to dinner at the home of Robert Hannaford. The Hannaford family originally made it's money in railroads but the current Hannafords are comprised of mostly disreputable losers who are being investigated for a variety of reasons. Robert Hannaford is also a cruel and vicious man.

Upon his arrival at the Hannaford family estate, Engine House, Gregor finds that Robert has been bludgeoned to death. The only people in the house are Mrs. Hannaford, dying from complications of multiple sclerosis and their seven dysfunctional adult children. Before long there are two more murders. There are a number of interesting subplots, including at least one for each of Hannaford's seven children.

Before Gregor retired he was the former head of the FBI Behavioral Sciences Department and as he starts to recover from his wife's death he's at loose ends. Soon Gregor is asked to act as a consultant to the police who are investigating the murders and begins to come alive again.

Gregor lives in the Armenian neighborhood of Cavanaugh Street in Philadelphia. In a parallel plotline, his parish priest, Father Tibor, has asked him to help locate neighbor Donna Moradanyan's boyfriend who disappeared when Donna became pregnant.

The mystery is well written and the characters are richly textured. I think this first book in the series shows some real potential. The author has introduced some characters that will obviously be regulars in future books and I would definitely read the next one.
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I think that I have read this before though it didn't seem familiar to me. If so, it is not surprising that I guessed who the murderer was (based solely on personality, not clues) - I may have subconsciously remembered.

I love the Armenian-American background; as I grew up in a town with a lot of Armenians, many aspects of this background remind me of my hometown. ( )

Well written. Look to read well from Jane Haddam. ( )