Winter is thawing, but in a small-town convent there lurks an ice-cold killerHer childhood friends wanted careers, but Brigit Ann Reilly spent her youth looking forward to her wedding—her wedding to God. When she finally gets to don the habit, her new order sends her to Maryville, where a former sister is poised to become Rome's first Irish-American saint. Brigit has no time to worry about Vatican politics. She's about to become a martyr herself. Brigit is found dead in the basement of her local library, her corpse swarming with ten poisonous water moccasins. When ex-FBI investigator Gregor Demarkian hears of her death, he is puzzled by two things: Water moccasins are not native to upstate New York, and Brigit died of hemlock poisoning, not the snakes' venom. As Maryville whips itself into a pious frenzy in search of evidence for its hometown hero's sainthood, Demarkian will attempt his own miracle by finding justice for the murdered young nun.

A gloomy Victorian manse, set on an island off the coast of Maine, seems an unlikely place for silent screen star Tasheba Kent's 100th birthday party. Controversy has always surrounded the mysterious megastar, so when Bennis Hannaford, bestselling author and distant cousin of Tasheba's lover, is invited to the soiree, she gladly invites her best friend, former FBI agent Gregor Demarkian. Death, it seems, requires no invitation to the festivities, for before Tasheba can blow out her candles, a crack on the skull cheats her of her centenary. The fete grows ever grimmer as Gregor investigates slashed telephone wires, suspicious revelers, and a second body among the birthday balloons. When a mammoth storm blows up, trapping them all on the island, only Demarkian can stop a killer whose dearest wish is to kill again.From Publishers WeeklyDescribed in the story as "Philadelphia's own Armenian-American Hercule Poirot," Gregor Demarkian tags along with his friend, fantasy novelist Bennis Hannaford, when she attends a distant relative's disastrous 100th birthday party. Tasheba Kent, once a silent screen star, caused a scandal in the 1930s when she ran off with her equally famous brother-in-law, Cavender Marsh, after her sister's mysterious death in France. The couple ensconced themselves in a gloomy mansion on an island off the coast of Maine and became recluses. For her birthday, however, they plan to auction off some of their possessions, an event drawing a motley assemblage of interested folk, including Cavender's daughter, whom he abandoned as an infant; a collector of Tasheba's memorabilia; a tabloid journalist; and an assortment of bankers and lawyers. When, during a fierce storm, Tasheba and the journalist are murdered, Gregor must call on his investigative skills, honed during his service with the FBI, and prevent another murder while he unmasks the killer. In this 10th in her holiday series after Bleeding Hearts, Haddam colors a transparent mystery plot with the traditions of gothic horror tales and silent film melodrama. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus ReviewsHaddam (Bleeding Hearts, 1994, etc.) must be running out of holidays: This time her homicidal tendencies are released by a birthday. But what a birthday it is--Tasheba Kent's centenary, designed to kick off an auction of memorabilia from her silent- film career. What actually kicks off, of course, is Tasheba herself, whose inaccessible private island off the Maine coast is awash in dead telephones, recorded screams, telltale cufflinks and feather boas, as well as suspects who wonder whether Tasheba's longtime companion Cavender Marsh really killed his wife, Lilith Brayne, back in 1938 in order to spend the rest of his life with her sister. Detection honors go to ex-FBI agent Gregor Demarkian, who spends an awful long time working up to the obvious solution. Minor Haddam, this cheerfully brazen homage to Ten Little Indians still has all the sparkle and complexity her fans have come to expect. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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...

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.

At a Fourth of July charity fundraiser, politics turns deadlyStephen Fox may be a moron, but he may also be America's next president. The dimwitted legislator is just smart enough to know when to smile for the camera. But two women stand in the way of his campaign: his mistress and his wife, who has never recovered from the death of their daughter, a pain she manages by devoting herself to fundraising for children with Down syndrome. During a weekend-long charity extravaganza on Long Island Sound, Fox's candidacy goes off the rails in a spectacularly bloody fashion. Ex-FBI investigator Gregor Demarkian is the first on the scene. Fox's entourage of political handlers may lie for a living, but Demarkian has a way of ferreting out the truth, and he will nab the killer before the last firework sounds.

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.

An infant’s death draws Demarkian to a strange Southern townAs a hurricane bears down on Bellerton, North Carolina, Zhondra Meyer opens her gates to the townsfolk. Her farm occupies the area’s highest ground, but the locals are wary of accepting her invitation. Zhondra says her camp is nothing more than a retreat for battered women, but the town’s evangelicals believe that her residents are lesbians, occultists, or, worst of all, satanists—a fear seemingly confirmed when an infant is found ritualistically slaughtered. Former FBI agent Gregor Demarkian might have experience solving religious murders, but he’s never dealt with satanism. Invited by his friend David, one of America’s most prominent atheists, to investigate the murder, Gregor keeps an open mind. What he finds in Bellerton shows that even the most pious Christians are capable of hellish deeds.

On Halloween, college students get rowdy and the faculty gets killedSince Father Tibor Kasparian escaped the Soviet Union, he has done his best to keep his philosophy to himself—not out of fear, but because he knows that few people could stomach an honest account of life under Stalinism. When he gets an invitation to spend a semester teaching philosophy at Independence College, Kasparian hesitates, but his friend Gregor Demarkian, a former FBI investigator, convinces him to accept. They will both wish he had decided to stay away. At Independence, Halloween is the biggest party of the year—it's also the anniversary of the day that the school's colonial founders pledged themselves to the American Revolution. As the students prepare to burn an effigy of King George, the hated professor Donegal Steele vanishes, and his secretary turns up dead. To keep his old friend from becoming the next victim, Demarkian will have to do his homework.

After twenty years in California, Frannie Jay—formerly Frances Jakumbowski—returns to her home turf: New Haven, Connecticut, a university town that has become rife with crime. The depressed aerobics instructor hopes to find new life at the Fountain of Youth—a workout studio whose weight trainer, Tim Bradbury, is the best in the business. But Frannie’s fresh start turns sour just before New Year’s, when she finds Bradbury in the bushes outside the studio, stark naked and stone dead.Former FBI investigator Gregor Demarkian comes to New Haven to assist the local police. Bradbury died of arsenic poisoning—a fate no amount of exercise can stave off—and any instructor and client in the studio could have killed him. Demarkian’s body may not be rock hard, but his mind is sharp, and he will see to it that the next weights the killer lifts will be in the prison yard.