A fight between people who take evolution as a fact and "creationists" perhaps leads to murder in a small Pennsylvania town. Gregor is finally marrying Bennis ( )

http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2009-05.html#witness ( )

This is the twenty-fourth in the Gregor Demarkian series by Jane Haddam, and the first in the series that I've read. I picked it because I saw a summary that made it clear it is set against a backdrop of a battle over evolution in schools similar to the one that actually took place in Dover, Pennsylvania, which is a big interest of mine.

Demarkian is a second-generation Armenian, who lives in an Armenian neighborhood in Philadelphia. He is a retired FBI agent who now consults with police. He is called into the small town of Snow Hill, Pennsylvania where a 91 year-old resident, Annie-Vic Hadley, is in a coma after being viciously beaten. She is on the school board, and one of the plaintiffs in a case against the rest of the school board, who voted to include stickers in the public school biology textbooks that say that some people don't accept evolution and for more information see a particular book that advocates intelligent design.

As Gregor investigates, another plaintiff is found murdered.

Demarkian finds a town divided. It is not simply fundamentalist Christians against those who support teaching evolution. Snow Hill is on the edge of Appalachia, and the hill people, a slightly less pejorative term for hillbillies, are despised by the townspeople. The townspeople, in turn, are mostly despised by the people in the "development", people who are not native to Snow Hill and for the most part want the town to change to be less provincial and to provide the kind of education tht will get their children into Ivy league schools.

Haddam creates fascinating characters and shows some of their thoughts, and in this way illustrates the differing sides in the turmoil. Some fulfill the stereotypes, such as a couple of the school board members who are willfully ignorant and proud of it; or, conversely, the school principal who is a native of the town but knows evolution is a fact and does not want to dilute teaching that fact. Others are less expected, such as the Holiness preacher who is a hillbilly who loves books, and not just those that come from Christian publishing houses. He has started a church school and is determined that the children of the hill people get a good education in an environment where they are not so despised. Then there is the police chief, a former Marine who calls in Demarkian because he, himself, is a suspect, and who has an act of superhuman bravery in his past.

I've always believed that fiction can tell psychological truths in a way that non-fiction cannot, and Haddam does a good job of proving it. By giving voice to the people of the town, she humanizes the viewpoints of people whose beliefs span a broad range. It isn't always comfortable - for example, she shows that people with my viewpoint can be as fanatical and irrational as those with the opposite view. But it IS enlightening. Haddam, in the after note, explains her own views on the controversy. She believes that evolution is a fact, just as gravity is a fact, even though the mechanisms by which both of these work are not yet completely understood. She is, however, concerned that there is an increasing view that everything that is not science is superstition, and that this view throws out not only what may be good in religion, but in the arts as well.

Did I like the book? Well, I've ordered the first in the series from my local library. You be the judge. ( )

A lawsuit over the introduction of Intelligent Design into the public schools deeply divides a small Pennsylvania town. When one of the plaintiffs, an elderly, much-disliked woman, is brutally attacked and left in a coma, the police chief asks for Demarkian's help.

This book badly needs copyediting. Discrepancies between volumes have long plagued this series, but this book has jarring problems with basic sentence structure and use of commas. If you don't care about that kind of thing, add half a star. ( )

I like Jane Haddam's Gregor Demarkian series, although it's slightly different than what I typically read in the mystery/thriller genre. I tend more towards cop books & forenisc books with the occasional political or legal thriller thrown in for good measure. Haddam's books are more closely related to Miss Marple - no, they're not British nor are they typically set in a small town, but in their own way they nicely fit the small village murder model. At least in my mind.

These books always make me think of the first couple of years we lived in Atlanta & our first apartment there in Virginia Highlands. There were a number of downsides to living there (too many bars right around the corner lead to drunk people in your yard at all hours of the day & night), but there were a couple of really good thing. One was the gelato place right down the street & around the corner. The other was the used bookstore, Atlanta Book Exchange, that was a bit further past the gelato shop & across the street. Atlanta Book Exchange fits my model for a good used bookstore - there are cats, the folks manning the "counter" are obviously avid readers & have worked there forever, there's a sense of organization that is transparent only to someone who works there, it smells slightly funky, & it's packed to the rafters with books. I first found Haddam's books there when I went in to trade some stuff I'd finished & find something new to read.

Her books frequently deal with some issue, but they are more wonderful in the way they deal with her main character, Gregor Demarkian, the Armenian former FBI guy & his foibles. Mr. Demarkian lives in a wonderfully real & whacky Armenian neighborhood in Philadelphia peopled by completely original & memorable characters who I absolutely fell in love with upon first reading.

& that, I think, is the problem with this particular book - it's taken Mr. Demarkian to small-town Pennsylvania & that's just not as compelling for me. I've read a number of reviews that complain about the two-dimensionality of the religious characters in this book about a fight over teaching Intelligent Design in the schools, but I'm going to have to disagree with them. Yes, many of the pro-Intelligent Design characters are pretty two-dimensional, but no more so than the pro-evolution characters. & that, I think, is another problem with this book. At some point most of these characters became straw figures in an elaborate argument & they stopped being people. Even more frustrating is the fact that there are a number of wonderful & complex characters in this book who get short shrift in favor of the argument.

Despite these shortfalls Haddam does write well & plot well & she manages to keep me wondering who did it so even a less successful book of hers is still entertaining. I'm looking forward to her next book & to getting back to the neighborhood - I want to know how everybody's doing! ( )