The death of a glamorous and fabulously wealthy debutante finds Gregor Demarkian investivating a quiet Connecticut town to find troubling passions lurking just under the surface. Original.

Skeleton Key

Literature & Fiction

Haddam, Jane

United States

Minotaur Books

Early one morning at St. Anselm's church in Philadelphia, a parishioner sneaks the body of his dead wife into the sacristy and commits suicide. His wife, a severe diabetic, is assumed to have died of natural causes - until the coroner discovers arsenic poisoning. The police are sure her husband was responsible, but one of the nuns at St. Anselm's doesn't and asks Gregor Demarkian, retired head of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, to investigate. With tensions mounting among the city's religious groups, Demarkian's lover Bennis undergoing a crisis of her own, and the denizens of Demarkian's Armenian-American neighborhood - Cavanaugh Street - involved in various uproars of their own, Demarkian is facing the most difficult case of his career.

True Believers: A Gregor Demarkian Novel (Gregor Demarkian Novels)

Jane Haddam's stylishly written novels featuring Gregor Demarkian, retired chief of the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit, have thrilled and delighted an ever-increasing number of readers over the years. Now, with Somebody Else's Music, Haddam delivers her most compelling crime novel to date - a brilliant exploration of how the past affects the present and the twisted workings of human psyche. Elizabeth Toliver, now an acclaimed author with a rock star lover, was a too-smart, fashion-impaired teen who was the target of abuse from a circle of popular high school girls. The abuse escalated until one summer night she was nailed into an outhouse with over twenty snakes and, while she beat herself into a coma trying to escape, a local teenage boy was murdered just outside. Still haunted by nightmares of that night, Toliver returns to her hometown for the first time in almost 30 years, triggering a deadly chain of events.

Somebody Else's Music: A Gregor Demarkian Novel

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

In the tradition of P. D. James, Jane Haddam's novels combine compelling story lines with a keen-eyed, complex sense of the character's psychology and sharp, evocative sense of place. Over the years her novels featuring retired F. B. I. agent Gregor Demarkian have won her the respect of the critics and an ever-increasing number of devoted readers. Now with Conspiracy Theory, all of Haddam's ample of gifts are on display in a chilling novel of class, conspiracy, and murder. Cavanaugh Street is a mostly quiet Armenian neighborhood in downtown Philadelphia where nearly everyone knows everyone else and certainly knows their business. But that quiet is destroyed when the Armenian Orthodox church is destroyed by bombing and its cleric, Father Tibor Kasparian, is hospitalized as a result. What would normally be a front page event, however, is overshadowed by another event across town - when Philadelphia Main Line society is shocked by the murder of one of their own. Anthony van Wyck Ross - the head of one of the major investment banks and a cornerstone of Main Line society - is murdered at the Around the World Harvest Ball being hosted at his mansion. Gregor Demarkian, former head of FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit, and longtime resident of Cavanaugh Street, is soon enmeshed in both cases. With the Ross murder, there is the never-seen conspiracy theorist Michael Harridan who in his literature has claimed that Ross was a member of the dangerous secret ruling elite, The Illuminati. With the church bombing, there were the anonymous threatening letters received by Father Tibor just prior to the bombing. Together - if indeed they are in some inexplicable way related - they are the most challenging cases Demarkian has ever faced.

Conspiracy Theory: A Gregor Demarkian Novel

The Headmaster's Wife: A Gregor Demarkian Novel (Gregor Demarkian Novels)

Mark DeAvecca is a brilliant fifteen-year-old in his first year at the exclusive private academy, Windsor School. Mark, the son of noted commentator Liz Tolliver, grew up in very different circumstances and could not fit in less well. With its hundred-year-old history, Windsor is rife with tradition, nasty rumors, petty jealousies and long buried resentments. The most savage of those unpleasant undercurrents swirl around the headmaster's wife - currently rumored, with good reason, to be having an affair with Mark's roommate, a street-tough scholarship student. Mark, however, has his own problems - he feels himself slowly losing his grip on reality and the staff widely believes him to be just another prep school burnout headed for an unpleasant end. So when Mark returns from a late-winter ramble about the campus to find his roommate dead, hanging from the ceiling of their room, he's reached the end of his own metaphorical rope. Even though he's no longer sure about the line between fantasy and reality, Mark is fairly certain that something is going on at the school and there's more to the death than the official declaration of suicide. With nowhere else to turn, Mark calls retired FBI agent Gregor Demarkian to ask for help. Sensing the crisis in Mark's dulled voice, Demarkian arrives to find Mark in dire physical and mental state, and a school only too eager to sweep his roommate's death under the rug. In what quickly becomes one of the most complex and challenging cases in his career, Demarkian must untangle truth from fiction, fantasy from reality, before another life is lost.

For over a year, Philadelphia has been plagued by a serial killer dubbed the Plate Glass Killer by the media. But finally, the police think they've caught a break - a man has been arrested at the site of the most recent murder, covered in the victim's blood. The man taken into custody is Henry Tyder, the scion of one of the most socially prominent families on Philadelphia's Main Line, a family that possesses the largest tracts of real estate in the city. He's also a hopeless alcoholic, frequently homeless and often estranged from his family. Although Tyder has apparently confessed to the crime, his attorney believes him to be too disordered to be capable of actually committing the crimes and asks Gregor Demarkian, retired head of the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit, to look into the case. Gregor, however, has other things on his mind - after having been away for nearly a year without a word to him, his live-in girlfriend, Bennis Hannaford, has returned to Cavanaugh Street. And everyone seems to have seen her but Gregor. While he waits for Bennis to finally appear, Gregor finds himself enmeshed in complex case of the Plate Glass Killer. Specifically, what would have drive Tyder to confess to crimes he was seemingly incapable of committing and, more importantly, if Tyder isn't the killer, then who really is behind the murders of the Plate Glass Killer.

Glass Houses: A Gregor Demarkian Novel (Gregor Demarkian Novels)

Contemporary

Margaret's Harbor, a small, exclusive island off the coast of Massachussets, has been disrupted for weeks by the antics of a group of young celebrities. Kendra Rhode, of the extremely wealthy Rhode family, is the ring leader and part-year resident on the island. Two of her cohorts, Arrow Normand, an aging teen pop idol, and Marcey Mandret, another of the same vintage, have been acting out publicly - drunken, disorderly public behavior eaten up by the press. During one of the most devastating blizzards in decades, Normand staggers up to a local house, covered in blood and incoherently drunk. Her latest boy toy is found shot dead in the front seat of a crashed truck. The only suspect in the crime is Normand herself and she was apparently far too out of it to remember what actually happened that night. Former F.B.I. agent Gregor Demarkian, fleeing from the preparations for his own wedding, is hired to review the case against Normand. What he finds is a case with little evidence, twisted by an out-of-control media and the cult of celebrity surrounding the three young women, and a mare's nest of motives, in what may be the most confusing, twisted case of his entire career.

Cheating at Solitaire: A Gregor Demarkian Novel (Gregor Demarkian Novels)

When a local Philadelphia radio host known for his incendiary right-wing tirades is arrested for possession of illegal prescription drugs, the incident sets into motion a series of events that leads ultimately to the death of a homeless man. In the complicated mix is the local Benedictine monastery, a Nobel-prize-winning leftist academic, and a homeless advocacy group, among others. Now Gregor Demarkian, a retired F.B.I. agent, is hired by a local legal project to look into the circumstances surrounding the death of their former client--a task that leads Demarkian through a mirror-maze of motives and actors as he struggles to unravel a most complex puzzle before the killer strikes again.

Hardscrabble Road: A Gregor Demarkian Novel (Gregor Demarkian Novels)

In every small town there is one person who always sparks controversy, and in Snow Hill, Pennsylvania, that person is Ann-Victoria Hadley. Now this 91-year-old spitfire is igniting a veritable powder keg—when she sues the school board for adding “intelligent design” to its science curriculum. Suddenly the whole town is caught up in a heated debate. But things really explode when, just before the trial, someone attacks Ann-Victoria with a club…
It’s not the first time Ann-Victoria has been attacked for her views. But it’s the only time someone used a blunt object to do it. Now this rebel with a cause is lying in a coma, unable to identify her assailant. The local police chief is on the school board, so he’s a suspect himself and can’t investigate. That’s when former FBI agent Gregor Demarkian steps into the fray—and finds himself matching wits with dueling Darwinists, devout Christians, and one dangerous criminal who’s ready to evolve…to committing murder.

Living Witness: A Gregor Demarkian Novel

In her 91 years, Ann-Victoria Hadley has often been the most hated person in Snow Hill, Pennsylvania. But now, it’s worse than ever. After a new school board inserted “intelligent design” into the curriculum, they were sued by a coalition including Hadley, the one member of the board who wouldn’t go along with the rest. With the trial about to start and the town a national laughing stock, Annie-Vic is found clubbed into unconsciousness and not expected to survive. The local police chief, one of the school board members, can’t investigate it himself and doesn’t trust the state police. So he brings in Gregor Demarkian. Gregor Demarkian, former FBI agent, is happy to help—his wedding is coming up and he’s desperate for a bit of time away from his too-involved neighbors on Cavanaugh Street in Philadelphia. Even if it is to investigate a brutal crime in a powder-keg of a small town.

Living Witness (Gregor Demarkian, Book 24)

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Haddam, Jane. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Haddam, Jane