Tempest Raj is back home. Until recently, she was headlining a magic show in Las Vegas, but a near-fatal accident ended her run, and her producers closed down her show. Having to stop early meant that she lost a lot of money, so she had to sell her house to pay everyone. She ended up back in California, moving back in with her father, into her childhood room.
Being back at home, nourished by her grandfather’s cooking, Tempest gets to spend time with her grandparents and father again, and to reconnect with old friends. She can recover from the illusion that left her underwater in a locked box for a length of time just short of deadly while a fire burned on the stage. But Tempest is certain that it was no accident. She wasn’t completely sure of who it was who rescued her, but she knows without a doubt that it was sabotage that caused the illusion to go so incredibly wrong.
But now that she’s home, she can help her father in a new way. He and Tempest’s mother had opened their own business years ago, and since her mother went missing five years ago, the business has been struggling. Her father is a builder, but it was her mother who brought her special magic to Secret Staircase Construction, a company that brings hidden rooms, secret passageways, and sliding bookcases to life. When Tempest was in Las Vegas, she could send money from her show home to help. Now that’s over, Tempest wants to help by adding some of her magic into the designs and the ideas, like her mother used to.
She goes to meet her father on his latest job, an older house that has a strange energy to it. In a small room off the kitchen that could be used as a pantry, they want to change it over to a playroom for the owner’s 6-yera-old son. But there is a coldness in the room that feels unnatural. And when the Secret Staircase team starts to open up one of the walls, they find a body. When they pull it out from the wall, they discover that it’s Tempest assistant from Las Vegas, Cassidy, who worked as Tempest’s body double.
Tempest has no idea who Cassidy ended up in the wall. She didn’t even know Cassidy was in California. And when the team went to investigate the house, to see how she had gotten into the wall, they found no way that she could have been placed there. There were no secret passageways, no openings, no way for someone to have hidden her there. Tempest was baffled. As someone who created illusions for a living, she was frustrated to be stumped on such a puzzle.
Tempest turned to the one person she knew could help with the mystery, her best friend Ivy. Since they were kids, they watched mystery movies and read books together, sharing their love of solving puzzles. Tempest and Ivy set about to figure out who would kill Cassidy and how they hid her body where Tempest would find it.
But at the same time, Tempest has to wonder if she had been the intended target. Tempest had chosen Cassidy for her magic show partly because of her resemblance to Tempest. Is it possible that someone had really wanted to kill Tempest? Or had Cassidy’s death and discovery been a warning for Tempest?
Or could it be the Raj curse, the one that had haunted her family for generations? The curse says that the firstborn in the family would die by magic. Is the curse coming for Tempest, or is it someone closer to home that is creating the danger?
Under Lock & Skeleton Key is the first in a new mystery series by Agatha Award winning author Gigi Pandian. This complex murder mystery blends magic and old-fashioned shoe leather, the wisdom of the crime novels we all grew up on and the modern tools we have now. With complex family issues and a bonus treasure hunt, this cozy offers up so much more than the typical cozy. The layers of the story is like finding a good book with its own hidden room behind the staircase, and it just keeps getting more interesting.
I got to listen to this one audio, with narrator Soneela Nonkani. I’ve listened to her read a couple of other books, and I feel like she is a bit of an acquired taste. At the beginning of the book, I felt like she was extra dramatic and she tamed her enthusiasm over the course of the book. Or I got used to her enthusiasm over the course of the book. That being said, I still really like her as a narrator. I thought she was a good match for Tempest, and she made listening to the book lots of fun. I think this would be a fun book to read, but it was also a lot of fun to listen to. Either way, Under Lock & Skeleton Key is a great addition to the mystery shelves, genuinely unique in its use of magic in solving crimes like this. and I can’t wait to see where Tempest takes us next!
An early copy of the audio book for Under Lock & Skeleton Key was provided by Macmillan Audio through NetGalley, with many thanks.
