Under Lock & Skeleton Key by Gigi Pandian (Tuesday Intros & Teaser Tuesday)

 

Title: Under Lock & Skeleton Key

Author: Gigi Pandian

Publication: 15 March 2022

Format: Kindle ebook

Amazon Description

An impossible crime. A family legacy. The intrigue of hidden rooms and secret staircases.

After a disastrous accident derails Tempest Raj’s career, and life, she heads back to her childhood home in California to comfort herself with her grandfather’s Indian home-cooked meals. Though she resists, every day brings her closer to the inevitable: working for her father’s company. Secret Staircase Construction specializes in bringing the magic of childhood to all by transforming clients’ homes with sliding bookcases, intricate locks, backyard treehouses, and hidden reading nooks.

When Tempest visits her dad’s latest renovation project, her former stage double is discovered dead inside a wall that’s supposedly been sealed for more than a century. Fearing she was the intended victim, it’s up to Tempest to solve this seemingly impossible crime. But as she delves further into the mystery, Tempest can’t help but wonder if the Raj family curse that’s plagued her family for generations—something she used to swear didn’t exist—has finally come for her.

Ramble-y Teaserish Stuff

I immediately got hooked with this one. Tempest Raj is 26 years old and has recently returned home to Hidden Creek, California, after an accident during a magic performance in Las Vegas almost killed her and did kill her career. Her childhood home, Fiddler's Folly, is full of hidden passages and secret staircases and her grandparents live in a treehouse in the backyard. Her father runs the Secret Staircase Construction company "to bring magic to people through their homes." He began the company with Tempest's mother who was also a magician ... until she disappeared on stage five years ago. The disappearance wasn't part of the act, but was thought by many to be linked to a family curse going back five generations. 

Shortly after Tempest returns home she is convinced to help with the family business -- currently doing renovations to a 110 year old mansion. The blueprints don't seem to match up what they're physically seeing, and they soon discover a body in a wall that apparently hadn't been touched in the 110 year history of the house. It literally falls out of the wall onto Tempest and wasn't a 110 year old body, at all -- it was Tempest's stunt double from Las Vegas. Her doppelganger. The one Tempest believed caused the career-ending accident.

There are so many questions facing Tempest, her friends, and her family (and the police, of course, even though they make an arrest very early on):

Who put Cassidy in the wall and how? 

Was it meant to be Tempest? 

Is it all related to the supposed curse? 

And is her mother really haunting her?

Like I said, I got hooked early. I have always wanted a secret room or hidden staircase which, of course, would lead to a nook where I could read my beloved mysteries and watch old classic movies and just hide from the world in general. Tempest and her best friend, Ivy, are also mystery buffs so there's plenty of name dropping that made me smile. Nancy Drew, Agatha Christie, Alfred Hitchcock and so many more. They plan to use their knowledge of mysteries -- both fictional and non (Ivy's sister is a true-crime writer), Tempest's knowledge of magic (along with her grandfather's though he hasn't performed in decades and hot hot hottie fellow magician Sanjay), and the combined knowledge of secret construction from her father and his crew (experts in "architectural misdirection") to figure out what really happened, how, and why.

I have had Gigi Pandian books on my TBR for years now. I am ridiculously glad that St Martin's agreed to let me have an advanced copy via NetGalley ... and I'm just as glad that I have so many other Pandian books available while I wait for the next Secret Staircase Mystery. Between the compelling mystery that kept me guessing the entire time, the rich details of the settings I will dream about for ages, and the mouth-watering food cooked up by Grandpa Ash, I'm definitely a fan.

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"First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros" is from the first paragraph or two of a book being read now (or in the future) and is hosted by Socrates' Book Reviews. 

"Teaser Tuesday" at The Purple Booker asks for a random line or two from anywhere in the book currently being read.