Jane Haddam: a wolf in sheep’s clothing
Excerpts from the interview by Lynn Kaczmarek in the April/May 2001 issue of Mystery News
I can’t remember exactly when I started reading Jane Haddam’s books and I can’t really remember which one I read first. I do know that it was after reading one of those hard-boiled thrillers that leaves you gasping for breath, jumping at every noise, and looking cautiously around every corner. I needed a break – something warm and fuzzy and decidedly predictable. Comforted by the cozy scene on the cover (Christmas, I think), I picked up one of Jane Haddam’s books.
It was somewhere in the middle of the now sixteen-book series featuring ex-FBI agent, Gregor Demarkian. Demarkian had retired as head of the FBI Department of Behavioral Science and after the death of his wife, had returned to the Armenian neighborhood in Philadelphia where he had grown up. There was comfort here reminding me of my own childhood in an Irish/Italian neighborhood in Chicago. Comfort ended there. Albeit not of the Silence of the Lambs variety, this was a gripping, violent book that dealt with nasty issues. I looked again at the cover. Yep, the quiet scene with Christmas tree lights glittering and snow lightly falling was still there, but somehow it had taken on a slightly evil edge – an edge I quite enjoyed…
True Believers, which hits the bookstores mid-April and has just received a starred review in Publishers Weekly, takes a look at religion – in particular gays, right wingers, and the things people will do because they “believe.”
“Everybody is a True Believer. Everybody has a little nugget they’re convinced of that is the opposite of the nugget on the other side. And they’re convinced it’s fact. People don’t accept the fact that a lot is perspective and I decided to play games with it,” says Haddam….
The clock is turning towards noon as Jane Haddam finish our conversation. We chat like old friends about her home in Connecticut, her beautiful view from her office, and I speak enviously about how nice if must be to live out in the country. A pause and then – “One day I’m going to go out there when the wild turkeys arrive and beat them to death – they’re not endangered any more and they bother the cat.” Visions of that scene buried in a book with cute little pussycats on the cover go up in smoke as I chuckle my response. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, indeed.
Read the full text of this interview in the April/May 2001 issue of Mystery News.
