Under Lock & Skeleton Key
Secret Staircase Mystery #1
by Gigi Pandian

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Cozy mystery

When a terrible accident forces Tempest Raj to end her career as a stage magician and return home, she never expects her show business world to follow her home. But then her stage double’s dead body is discovered in the wall of a home that her father’s construction business is renovating, and the question on everyone’s mind is: was Tempest the intended target?

Between the stage magic angle and Tempest’s dad’s construction business specializing in installing secret rooms and passages into homes, I felt that this mystery would be right up my alley. Sadly, my high expectations were met with a mediocre, at times confusing, story and a mystery that, only 8 days after I finished it, I barely remember the final resolution to. There were a lot of characters, including Tempest’s eclectic and spread-out family, and I had a difficult time keeping everyone straight. 

I did like the many references and homages to classic mysteries, some of which I missed out on when I was younger but have read lots of recently (Holmes & Poirot, for example). I really liked the idea of the secret staircase construction company; it seems like the kind of company that would be awesome to work for, similar to working at an escape room company (which I did for a while). The stage magic aspect wasn’t a huge part of the story, though Tempest does a lot of…I guess dance moves, when she’s stressed or thinking or whatever, which are moves she used in her show, and there are some tricks performed both by her and a fellow magician friend of hers. Overall though, we’re mostly just told about the story she used to tell in her show and that she was really good at what she did.

I can say for sure that a lot of what fell flat for me in this book is personal preference or experience. I didn’t connect with Tempest or her large, somewhat intrusive family. I’m not super interested in the different dishes of food that are described in the book, which makes the abundance of them and the details about them a bit much for me. But if the different elements I mentioned throughout this review sound interesting to you and you enjoy mysteries, you might be the perfect audience for this book. Please do click the link below to check out the more favorable reviews, of which there are plenty!

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