Rating: 
Summary: Somebody Else's Music
Review: "Somebody Else's Music" is yet another compelling work by Jane Haddam featuring Gregor Demarkian.Successful author Liz Toliver has been the victim of scurrilous articles in the National Enquirer suggesting that she may have got away with murder. Liz has managed sucessfully to overcome her childhood unpopularity, but the horror of her experiences in her home town of Hollman is relived frequently in her dreams. Part of those recurring dreams concerns an episode of brutal bullying directed at Liz by some members of her high school class that coincided with the still unsolved murder. At the request of Liz's lover, an old acquaintance of his partner Bennis, Gregor agrees to accompany Liz to her hometown where she is to look after her aging mother. Gregor is tasked to look into the 30 year old murder and to establish the source of the National Enquirer stories. This is more than a routine mystery novel. It's as much social commentary - in particular, highlighting and skewering the more extreme manifestations of what appears to many outside observers to be a peculiar and uniquely American rite of passage called 'High School'. Ms Haddam examines the lingering implications of behaviour learnt in high school that can do untold damage to less popular individuals and, particularly in small communities, that can continue to adversely affect many people for the rest of their lives. It is a beautifully written book, with sharply drawn characters and a vivid sense of time and place. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Your Own Music
Review: First in True Believers and now in Somebody Else's Music, Jane Haddam has taken her already excellent Demarkian series to new heights of achievement while searching into the depths of human experience. In Somebody Else's Music, Haddam takes on the great American obssesion of "high school." She explores not only the laugable, pathetic irony of maybe having your best days defined as being a sixteen year old cheerleader or homecoming queen--a yikes thought if there ever was one--but also unflinchingly faces the real and devastating pain that children can inflict on one another. The toads in this imaginary garden are very real. Liz Tolliver is a successful writer with a terrific lover in her life and the most wonderfully real and awesome son, Geoff. Bt she still has nightmares from her childhood as the deginated object of cruelty from the "popular" girls in her hometown. She employs one of them even, refusing to see the woman's disloyalty, unkindness and incompetence. And, of course, she has to go home--to take care of her ailing aging mother and after almost thirty years has to confront the abuse that culminated in a night of horror during which she was deliberatly trapped one night in an outhouse filled with snakes (by her "friends"/ At the same time, a young boy is murdered. It's this cold case that draws Gregor Demarkian into the story. His intellectual detachment, insight along with his honest bemusement over the strangeness of the whole high school pain provides the balance to a riveting story and the chance for the reader to step back momentarily and breathe in this clear look at the power of the past. An excellent story, extremely well-told. Haddam continues to surprise and delight her readers with the increasing power of her work.
Rating:
Summary: my favorite Haddam novel
Review: First, a rebuttal to the two reviewers who hated this novel. I read mystery novels for fun. If I do not like a novel, I don't even bother to finish reading it. Why waste time allocated to having fun on something that is just not fun for you? Apparently two of the reviewers did just that..and then wrote scathing reviews of the novel that both include personal attacks on the author. Take their reviews with a grain of salt -- no, make that 6 cups of salt. This novel is about the tormenting of classmates that goes on in schools -- a very timely topic considering recent school violence such as that at Columbine. At the core of this novel are the emotional scars left on both the victims and the perpetrators of school bullying. I found this book deeply moving. There is less humor in this novel than in some of Haddam's other Gregor Demarkian novels, but there is more humanity.
Rating: 
Summary: Revenge of the nerds
Review: Haddam evidently didn't have a very good time of it in High School and uses this opportunity to strike back at the popular and pretty. She even includes their initials in her dedication -- get over it girl! As an author she can now be all powerful and she makes her stand in heroine a fellow writerand former nerd who has not only become a CNN regular, been nominated for the Pulitzer prize but also is the latest love object for a big rock star who is a personal friend of Paul McCartney. She tools into her old home town in her new Mercedes, brillant, wealthy, yet becomingly humble in order to expose all those cheerleaders as the losers they are. There's a murder and a mystery in here, but it's lost in endless details about how fat the it girls have become, how neurotic, how alcoholic, how badly they've married. I hate it when an author is unfair to their characters and Haddam really piles it on, her vitriol overpowering what is really a slight cozy of a book. This is a revenge fantasy for the bright High School outcast (and judging from other reader comments, they're really digging it) but it really has a nasty edge that clashes with the too good to be true Romance novel series characters.
Rating:
Summary: Theme Music
Review: Haddam has a gift for getting under the skin of popular culture. Here she moves away from her primary characters, but keeps them believably involved as she dissects the horrors of happy childhood. Liz Tolliver has risen above all the challenges and griefs of her life, but not the nightmares of her 18 years in a small town. She returns to cope with her widowed mother's Alzheimer's disease, and with her all too vivid memories of the last girlish "prank" played by her high school classmates, which left her hospitalized and a boy dead. They too are living with memories -- of the happiest years of their lives. There are some rough spots -- a character from another book is awkwardly reintroduced, some of the killer's motivation is thin. The book sweeps the reader past those small things, and there is surprising jubilation when Liz, by now a definite heroine, achieves her goals.
Rating:
Summary: Couldn't even finish
Review: I gave this book a chance, but after a week I could only get through 140 pages. Nothing happened, and the female characters, waiting for Liz to arrive in town, were all the same and kept throwing up as they waited. It was one of the worst books I have ever read. Maybe it got better, maybe I should have kept going, but I finally grabbed something else off my shelf and immediately I was involved. That never happened with this awful book.
Rating:
Summary: Super!
Review: I have always thought that we don't change much after we get out of highschool, ... I thought this book was an incredibly realistic portrayal of some of the awful stuff that can go on in school, and how some people can manage to transcend these events--traumatic as they are. Speaking for myself, it was good to see the cheerleaders get their just reward in the end! ...
Rating:
Summary: Super!
Review: I have always thought that we don't change much after we get out of highschool, ... I thought this book was an incredibly realistic portrayal of some of the awful stuff that can go on in school, and how some people can manage to transcend these events--traumatic as they are. Speaking for myself, it was good to see the cheerleaders get their just reward in the end! ...
Rating:
Summary: EXCELLENT
Review: I have long been a fan of Jane Haddam's, but she's really outdone herself with this one. Anyone who has suffered the horrors of highschool will appreciate how well Ms Haddam handles the topic of surviving--and thriving--after school. Liz Toliver's transcendence is beautifully wrought and Haddam's deft handling of the topic is impressive.
Rating:
Summary: Very Dark
Review: I love murder mysteries and especially enjoy some of the series characters such as Kinsey Millhone, Annie Darling, and Gregor Demarkian. So, I looked forward to reading Jane Haddam's latest book - Somebody Else's Music. This book is extremely dark and violent. It is well written, but is drastically different in tone from previous Demarkian books. The subject matter is disturbing, the people are psychotic, and the murders are very graphic and gruesome. I trade mysteries with my sister and have already told her she shouldn't read this one. This book is acceptable if you enjoy darker mystery authors such as PD James. But, if you prefer mysteries that don't venture too far into the crime genre - this book is definately not for you.
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