True Believers (Gregor Demarkian Novels) [Mass Market Paperback]

True Believers has all three.

The writing is wonderful, the mystery kept me wondering, and the characters are all fully fleshed and realistic. This is true of both the regulars and those who appear just in this book. While I enjoy the character development of Gregor and Bennis and the other inhabitants of Cavanaugh St., I also appreciate the fact that the mystery and the plot are never sacrificed. Rather, the book is made up of interlocking strands, which tie together to make up the story as a whole, but which don't always intermingle.

While the strands may not get mixed together, they progress together, affect each other, and in the end, the whole is cohesive and there are no loose ends.

The story involves deaths at a Philadelphia church, and eventually encompasses the Catholic church where the deaths take place, the Episcopalian one across the street, and the fundamentalists down the road. It's a complicated story, involving child abuse, embezzlement, fundamentalism, the death penalty debate, and gay rights groups, and yet at the end the solution is straightforward and logical.

While the mystery gets solved and all the storylines come together at the end, the characters don't just weather the storm and come out unscathed at the end of the story. Bennis has to deal with the impending execution of her sister (who had committed murder in an earlier book). People in Jane Haddam's books deal with the consequences of their own, and of others', actions, and it's part of what makes this book, and this series, as vital and interesting as it is. The books are always complex and the treatment of the issues involved, whether it's child abuse or anti-abortion activism, or the death penalty, is never superficial. These are realistic characters, dealing with real-life difficulties and their lives change as a result.

True Believers is one of the stronger entries in the Gregor Demarkian series, and that is, in my opinion, saying quite a lot.

True Believers is no less. It is more. Not only does she understand the Catholic Church like few other writers, she understands my beloved Episcopal Church, too. And once again, she kept me guessing right up to the last. All of the clues were there, right in front of me, but I managed to miss the right combination of pieces to the puzzle.

No other writer, for me, has quite the turn of phrase, adjectives, and thoughts of Jane Haddam. I laughed out loud and groaned in sympathy with Gregor and Bennis once more, and thoroughly enjoyed every moment of "True Believers". Where else would I find phrases like "she had all the fashion sense of a psychotic duck", or read about a digital machine for making sock balls? Where else could I be "in the minds" of characters I have come to so enjoy? Where else could I find such delight in Gregor's confusion over Bennis, and Bennis' confusion with Gregor? Where else could I read about an Armenian priest hooked on the Internet and on the love of learning? Where else could I glimpse another culture so like and yet unlike my own? Only in Jane Haddam's Gregor Demarkian series. There is no other like it, and every book is a delight of its own. True Believer's is the latest gem on the necklace. Don't miss it! If you see what I mean . . .