Jane Haddam

Jane Haddam, *Conspiracy Theory*
Another Gregor Demarkian novel. Haddam likes to orient her books to the real world. In this case she talks about conspiracy theories. She gives web sites.

Gregor's neighborhood Armenian church is bombed into rubble. Meanwhile a prominent banker is shot. How will Gregor connect these two events.

Jane Haddam

Jane Haddam, *The Headmaster's Wife*
Another Gregor Demarkian mystery. This novel deals with the politics of a boarding school. The son of a friend of Gregor's calls him because he (the son) thinks he may be hallucinating.
Everyone at the school thinks Mark is a druggie but Mark says he never takes drugs. Then his room mate commits suicide. Gregor does not want to investigate another murder but he wants to help mark.
It took me a few chapters to get into this book, which features a huge cast of characters any of whom can be the murderer.

Jane Haddam

Jane Haddam, *Hardscrabble Road*
Jane Haddam writes classical mysteries, calling her protagonist the Armenian American Hercule Poirot. Gregor Demarkian is a retired FBI Special Agent who often consults in murder mysteries.
In this mystery, Gregor is called in when a homeless man disappears. It's a complex story. A radio celebrity is arrested with a lot of prescription drugs he blames the homeless man as his supplier. Evrybody knows the old alkie can barely find the mens room, much less go to pharmacies to get prescriptions filled.
Then the celebrity is found dead.
Hardscrabble Road is the site of a monastery (female) which figures in the mystery.
Recommended for hard scrabble mystery fans.

More on The Great Depression

In the small town where I was raised I was of the affluent elite, because my father taught school and had a salary, altho years later I learned we lived far below the poverty line. Our neighbors had no money at all and lived in houses they did not own. we lived in a certified Ghost Town.

The Great Depression

Back in the day it was only a depression, not The Great.
The depression was underway in Iowa in the early twenties. During the Great War when the price of wheat was high, farmers borrowed money. Then they lost their farms when the war was over and the price of wheat fell.
The stock market crashed in 1929.
I was born in 1926. My memories began after Roosevelt had been elected president. In rural Michigan where I lived, everybody I knew hated Roosevelt and the New Deal. R slaughtered baby pigs. (This was a program to reduce production. Pigs were slaughtered and farmers were paid not to plant.)

My father was out of work in 1936. We lived on credit. Our landlady allowed us to stay in our rented house and our grocer extended credit.

We ate beans and beans and beans and beans. During the summer we canned and canned. we picked wild blackberries and canned fifty quarts. During the summer we ate string beans cooked in milk. My mother was nutrition conscious.

Fear

Today on NPR I listened to a rabbi who has written a book about getting along with your relatives who disagree with you. *Faith without Fanaticism*
He suggests that one asks the other, "What about this frightens you?"

So I asked myself, "What frightens you about Sarah Palin?"
I have said before that I feel as if I were looking at the Ghost of Christmas Past. Gov. Palin is straight out of the fifties, the Eisenhower administration.
I guess I fear that all the advances (in my opinion) made by women during the past fifty years will be cancelled.

My fears lessened during the VP debate when Palin modified her stance on gay marriage. It occurred to me that culture itself will put pressure on Palin. The culture has moved forward. A cultural lag can only do so much.

And culture change comes about as a result of technology change. I would suggest that the women's movement came about because women no longer produce at home. In the old days women had a great deal of work to do in the household.

The Election

Last night I listened to the acceptance speech of the first African-American president elect. I had a proprietary feeling that I had helped bring about this moment.
In the sixties I marched in civil rights demonstrations. In Lansing MI that was not very dangerous, but my feet hurt.
Even last year I never would have believed that this man could be elected president.
As a sociologist, I think after listening all day to the analysis of exit polls that it boils down to demographics. A new generation has arrived.