Melissa (Trying to Catch Up)'s Reviews > The Raven Thief

This second installment of the Secret Staircase Mystery series is another fun cozy-style mystery. Although it isn't critical to read the first book in the series before this one, you will get more of a background of Tempest, her family, and their backgrounds if you read Under Lock & Skeleton Key first.

In this book, Tempest's friend Sanjay is tasked with conducting a fake séance to banish the "ghost" of Lavinia's cheating ex-husband, mystery author Corbin Colt. She just wants his aura cleared from her home The ceremony takes place in the new "lair" that Tempest and her family just completed for Lavinia, full of secret passageways and hiding places. However, when the lights go out and come back on during the séance, Corbin's dead body has landed right in the middle of the room. How did he get in the locked room and killed? Suspicion is thrown on Tempest's grandfather Ash, and so she puts on her detective hat once again to try to find the real culprit.

This series is very enjoyable and this book has all of the elements of a classic locked room mystery. I like Tempest as a character and even though I usually don't care for armchair detectives, she mostly just uses her magician's brain to puzzle things out rather than conducting the detective work herself. I say mostly because there was a bit of breaking and entering... Overall the solution was clever and believable and kept me interested to find out how things were done.

There is an overarching mystery in this series, that of the disappearance of Tempest's mother. I'm ready for that to be solved because I feel like things are being too dragged out with that plot thread. I don't think it's necessary to keep belaboring that mystery, just solve it and the series can keep going with the whole secret staircase/magic/hidden room themes and still be fun and intriguing.

I listened to this as an audiobook and although there is a huge cast of characters, narrator Soneela Nankani does an amazing job keeping things moving and distinguishing between the various voices. These books are delightful as audiobooks.

I look forward to the next book in the series for more reveals!

I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book, all opinions are my own.