`Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.”
It’s been a long time since I learned that at Girl Scout camp, but it’s a good motto for the mystery lover. A familiar author is an eagerly awaited pleasure. We know what to expect, and we enjoy the style that gets us there. With a new writer, we sacrifice that comfortable expectation but may be richly rewarded for our risk.
“Fountain of Death,” by Jane Haddam (Bantam, $5.50), is the newest entry in the Gregor Demarkian series. Like the 10 books that preceded it, it is set around a holiday, in this case New Year’s.
The holiday gimmick is OK, but in fact, aside from Demarkian’s repeated statement that he has no use for the New Year’s holiday and a few descriptions of tacky decorations, this story could just as well be set in November or March.
Demarkian, a retired FBI specialist on serial killers, leaves his Philadelphia home for New Haven at the request of the police to assist in the investigation of a mysterious murder of a weight training instructor, whose naked body was found behind the Fountain of Youth club.
The cast includes the club’s owners, about to embark on a national tour; the instructors, with their toned bodies and secret pasts; the students in a weeklong program; and the police official who invited Demarkian and then seems to ignore him.
Absent from this story is Demarkian’s usual sidekick, fantasy writer Bennis Hannaford, whose Main Line connections have been featured in previous books. She is missed; their repartee and multilayered friendship make this series interesting.
There’s a mysterious accident and a second poisoning before Demarkian figures it all out. Haddam, who as Orania Papazoglou has another entertaining mystery series featuring a “true crime” writer, is a good storyteller. She’s a whiz at managing different story lines, and if some of the characters are two-dimensional, it’s easy to overlook.
“Grave Choices,” by M.D. Lake (Avon, $4.99), is part of Lake’s series about Peggy O’Neill, a series that’s new to me and one I regret it took me so long to find.
The story involves O’Neill, a cop at a Midwestern college campus, and the murder of an art instructor. Evidence points to a talented potter with a longtime grudge against the victim.
Despite the potter’s presence at the murder scene, O’Neill comes to believe he is guilty of nothing more than having a rash temper. The link between the potter and the victim is 20 years old, and involves the unsolved murder of a promising young sculptor who was denied tenure, probably a victim of university sexism.
Art is an important element in this book–there’s also an art museum about to open on campus with a new director–and it turns out O’Neill is knowledgeable about the subject. Her lively comments on art make her a more interesting sleuth.
Lake drops all the clues in the right places. Next time I come across Peggy O’Neill, I’ll be another old friend.