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CONSPIRACY THEORY
by Jane Haddam
St. Martin's Minotaur, July 2003
338 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 0312271883


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

For those of you already familiar with Jane Haddam's Gregor Demarkian series, I will tell you simply to go out and buy this book. It is as good as anything she's written so far (and I've read almost all of them).

For those of you new to this series, I'd suggest that you start at the beginning and enjoy the reading all the way up to and through this book. You have eighteen books ahead of this one. You could easily read this as a stand-alone, and it wouldn't detract very much from the book; Ms. Haddam, in this book, doesn't require that we know all the prior history for the on-going characters. I find, however, with Gregor and his circle, it adds a certain resonance to know what has gone before.

Conspiracy Theory begins with the almost simultaneous murder of a very wealthy and very important banker, Anthony van Wyck Ross, and the bombing of the Armenian Orthodox Church down the street from Demarkian's home. Gregor is torn between helping the police with the Ross murder and tracking down the person who bombed the church. Then Charlotte Deacon Ross is murdered, in front of her house, just as her family is gathering to bury her husband Tony (see sentence #1 in this paragraph).

Somehow connecting all three of these incidents is a newsletter called The Harridan Report, which connects the van Wyck Ross's to an enormous conspiracy. There is talk of a "New World Order", and "One World Government". The world is, according to various theorists, controlled by only 13 families, called "The Illuminati", made up of the descendants of the Merovingian Dynasty in the Middle Ages. What is more than a little scary is Jane Haddam's informing us that the web-sites mentioned in the book are actual sites, up and running when she was writing this book, and quite probably still up and running, should a reader care to check.

Gregor finds himself stuck, stuck in the classical "you can have any two of three choices, but you can't have all three at the same time" quandry. IF this all has to do with conspiracy theory, it makes sense (sort of) for Tony to die and the church to be bombed. IF this has to do just with the Ross family, as one might be led to believe after reading several issues of The Harridan Report, it makes no sense for the church to be bombed. Gregor can't come up with any direct connection between the church and Charlotte Ross, which is even more confusing.

There is quite a bit of information in Conspiracy Theory about the very wealthy, old-money level of society, how they function, think, behave, and how they truly don't live in the same world that the rest of humanity inhabits. There is also a sub-plot involving Tony's sister Anne Ross Wyler and her shelter/home for child prostitutes.

By the end of the book, Ms. Haddam has made all the connections obvious, tied up pretty much all the loose ends, and sent us on our merry way. . . except for the little niggling memory that there really are people who believe these theories. These web-sites are out there, every day, presenting this world-view to anyone who cares to read it. The people who believe these theories are, by and large and for the most part, people like me and you. People who work every day, people who raise children, people who go to the supermarket. They/We aren't all obvious nut-cases, easily picked out of a crowd. And that, along with Ms. Haddam's skill as a writer, is what makes it just that little bit harder to view this particular book as merely entertainment.

I recommend this book. I've always liked this series. Conspiracy Theory does nothing to change that liking, and spurs me to go back to read the ones I've missed.

Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, July 2003

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