The Gregor Demarkian Holiday Mysteries Series

As college students get dressed up for Halloween, ex-FBI agent Gregor Demarkian must catch a real campus ghoul before another faculty member is murdered.  Since 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.

A retired FBI agent defends a do-gooder doctor suspected of murdering a media mogul: “Haddam plays the mystery game like a master” (Chicago Tribune).  Michael Pride could have been a world-class surgeon, but his good intentions got the best of him. He opened a clinic in one of New York’s roughest neighborhoods, and stuck around when gangs, drugs, and guns turned it into a war zone. Supporting his mission is Charles van Straadt, a media titan with a knack for incendiary headlines and a soft spot for good works. When a sex scandal threatens to derail Pride’s clinic, van Straadt is the only one who stands by him—until the mogul is poisoned, and the doctor appears to be the only person who could have done it. Former FBI agent Gregor Demarkian has a chance of proving Pride’s innocence. In a part of New York that feels more like Beirut than Broadway, it will take more than good works for the two of them to survive.

A Holy Week murder puts former FBI agent Gregor Demarkian on the trail of an unholy killer—“Haddam plays the mystery game like a master” (Chicago Tribune).  In high school, Cheryl was an outcast, tolerated only because the boys considered her easy. But one night at Black Rock Park, the popular kids were strangely kind, and for the first time in her life, Cheryl’s future seemed bright. Twenty heartbreaking years later, Cheryl is dying of cancer, and wants to return to the one place where she ever knew true happiness. But there is something she doesn’t know about that night in Black Rock Park—and the classmates who once pretended to befriend her will kill to keep the secret buried. After Cheryl is found poisoned, the case falls to Gregor Demarkian, a former FBI agent with a knack for solving small-town murders. To discover who killed this terminally ill woman, Demarkian will have to peer into the mysteries of the local Catholic church—and find the killer who is hiding behind a pious facade. 

As St. Patrick’s Day nears, a retired FBI agent must solve a sinful crime near a small-town convent: “[An] engrossing murder case . . . enjoyable” (Publishers Weekly).  Her 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.

Murder is in the cards this Valentine’s Day. “Never quite cozy and never quite tough, this tale combines the best of both styles to stunning effect” (Publishers Weekly).  Psychiatrist Paul Hazzard was renowned for his insights into the human mind, until his wife was savagely murdered. She was stabbed to death with an ornamental dagger, a grisly crime for which Paul was tried but never convicted. Four years later, to escape his greedy family and his former mistress, Paul takes an unlikely lover: the homely, middle-aged Hannah Krekorian. Hannah’s neighbors, including former FBI agent Gregor Demarkian, are charmed by the sudden romance—until they find her holding an antique dagger over Paul’s bloody body. The police are convinced of Hannah’s guilt, but Demarkian knows his neighbor could never stab Paul to death. Hannah’s valentine may be gone, but if Gregor works a miracle, she’ll have something even better come February 14th: her freedom.

Edgar Award–Nominated Author: At a convention of nuns, an ex-FBI agent hopes to get a killer’s confession . . .  A superfluity of nuns has descended on Philadelphia, and the city is doing all it can to keep them entertained. The spiritual sisters’ convention lined up several speakers, including media mogul Henry Hare, shock-jock extraordinaire Norm Kevic, and the brilliant sleuth Gregor Demarkian, whose lecture “Investigating the Catholic Murder” is sure to cause a sensation. As a former FBI investigator, Demarkian has plenty of first-hand experience solving heinous crimes—religious or otherwise. And he’s about to get a little more practice. At the convention’s first banquet, one of the nuns drops dead after ingesting the wrong cut of the deadly fugu fish. But was Sister Joan really the target, or was someone trying to do away with the loathsome Mother Mary Bellarmine? All of God’s children may go to heaven—but one of His wives is going to jail.

Edgar Award Finalist: The patriarch of a wealthy, notoriously unpleasant Philadelphia family is murdered, and a former FBI agent must figure out whodunit.  The Hannaford who made the family fortune called himself a tycoon. The newspapers called him a robber baron. Since the days of Robert Hannaford I, the family has infested Philadelphia society like a disease. The current Hannafords are a clan of embezzlers, gamblers, and fantasy novelists. This Christmas, they have money in their bank accounts, crime in their blood, and murder on their minds. Gregor Demarkian is their reluctant guest. A former FBI agent who quit the agency after his wife’s death, he is invited by the Hannaford patriarch to come for dinner at the family mansion. Demarkain arrives just in time to find his host bludgeoned to death in his study and his investigation will lead him to the Hannafords, a family of cold-blooded killers.

A Fourth of July fundraiser leads to fireworks of another kind in this “entertaining, satisfying mystery” (Publishers Weekly).   Stephen 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.

A former FBI agent gets entangled in a financial mogul’s murder in this “superior” whodunit series (Publishers Weekly).  Once one of Wall Street’s most powerful forces, Donald McAdam’s life changed when he found himself in a tight spot with the SEC. Either give up everything, they told him, or inform on your friends. Never one for loyalty, McAdam chose the wire, and sent half the stockbrokers in New York to prison. Now he’s filthy rich, isolated, and so paranoid that he buys his cocaine laced with strychnine, in hopes of building up a tolerance for the poison. His caution doesn’t help him, however, when he tumbles off his high-rise balcony and falls headfirst back down to Wall Street. Soon afterward, one of the men McAdam put away invites ex–FBI investigator Gregor Demarkian on a very peculiar cruise—onboard a cramped precise replica of the Mayflower. But when the behavior of the passengers proves rather un-Puritan, Demarkian discovers something that would have shocked Columbus: a New World murder. 

A Christmas controversy turns deadly for a tiny New England village in a mystery that offers “a sharp perspective on the nasty smugness of small towns” (The New York Times).  Bethlehem, Vermont, is a sleepy little town, distinguished from the neighboring hamlets by its Christmas pageant. The holiday spectacular dates back generations; as the village’s only tourist attraction, it brings in much of the money that keeps Bethlehem afloat. The festivities are held on publicly owned land, which might be a slight violation of the separation of church and state, but no one has ever complained until Tish Verek comes to town. Verek is a true-crime writer from New York, and not long after she kicks up a fuss about the pageant, she’s shot dead in an apparent hunting accident. Anyone in Bethlehem could have fired the fatal bullet, and it’s up to ex–FBI investigator Gregor Demarkian to decide which Christmas-obsessed villager is really a grinch in disguise.

As New Year’s approaches, a former FBI investigator—“the Armenian-American Poirot”—resolves to find the killer of a Connecticut exercise guru (Kirkus Reviews).   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.

When a killer stalks a provocative talk show host, ex-FBI agent Gregor Demarkian is the next guest in this mystery from the author of Quoth the Raven.  Sex, sex, and more sex—this is the formula for a hit talk show. No one knows this better than Lotte Goldman, host of television’s most outrageous chat show, but even she is getting bored of her sensational interviews. To break the routine, she and her producer—the towering, dynamic DeAnna Kroll—take the show to Philadelphia to film a conversation between ex-FBI agent Gregor Demarkian and a convicted serial killer. But before they hit the road, a murder hits them. Lotte’s talent coordinator is found dead in a closet, her face battered beyond recognition, and a second victim appears soon after they arrive in Philadelphia. To save the most popular woman on TV, Demarkian leaps into a cat-and-mouse game so twisted that it’s perfect for premium cable.