Publisher's Weekly Review
Pandian triumphs again with her excellent third whodunit featuring magician-turned-sleuth Tempest Raj (after The Raven Thief), in which a baffling murder revives an unsolved Raj family mystery. After her career as a Las Vegas illusionist ended badly, Tempest moved home to Hidden Creek, Calif., to join the family business: a secret staircase construction firm. The company is in peril courtesy of a lawsuit filed by Julian Rhodes, whose wife, Paloma, fell to her near death from a circular staircase built by the firm. Tempest suspects that Julian actually tried to murder Paloma by pushing her down the stairs and then damaged the top step to implicate the Rajs. Her quest to find the truth and save the company grows more complicated when she receives a midnight call from Julian, asking her to meet him at the Whispering Creek Theater, the same place Tempest's mom disappeared from five years earlier. When Tempest arrives at the theater, she finds Julian impaled by a booby-trapped sword. By solving Julian and Paloma's murders, Tempest hopes to unearth answers about her own long-simmering family tragedy. Pandian continues to channel golden age masters including John Dickson Carr and Clayton Rawson with this fiendishly clever, intricately constructed whodunit. It's another home run from a major talent. (Mar.)
Booklist Review
In the third Secret Staircase mystery (after The Raven Thief, 2023), Julian Rhodes is suing Secret Staircase Construction, Tempest Raj's family business, for a faulty staircase installation that he says led to his wife's fall, leaving her in a coma. Or was the staircase sabotaged, as Tempest believes? When Tempest and her mentor, Nicodemus, find Rhodes dead, skewered by a sword through a booby-trapped door in the theater Tempest, a stage magician, is renting for her final performance, she believes she and her family may become suspects. However, the police center their investigation on Rhodes' wife, Paloma, who woke from her coma, left the hospital, and disappeared. Tempest fears that could change, so she investigates, with the help of her friends. Soon another death occurs, and Tempest begins to believe these deaths may be connected to her aunt's death and her mother's disappearance. Plot twists abound in this mystery of misdirection, including details of stage magic, framed by the importance of family and friends, as Tempest resolves the long-standing mystery of a reputed family curse.
Kirkus Review
A magic-filled family seeks change to avoid a curse that seems unwilling to leave them alone. Classic stage illusionist Nicodemus the Necromancer has always been something like a second father, or at least a mentor, to Tempest Raj. As his retirement tour begins, Nicodemus realizes that he finds it hard to say farewell to his persona and become just Gareth Nicodemus again. Tempest sympathizes with him but can't relate to his anxiety. She's been glad to leave the world of stage magic behind and transition to her role as an employee of her actual dad's company, Secret Staircase Construction, where she hones her skills crafting well-designed illusory works of architectural art. It's not just her love of the work that brings Tempest relief. She's all too aware of the curse that's haunted her father's family for years: "The eldest child dies by magic." In previous books in the series, Tempest has seen the curse devastate her relatives. Though construction work is meant to be less dangerous than magic, there are issues with Tempest's latest project for the difficult Julian Rhodes, and things get a lot more difficult when her client mysteriously winds up dead--though whether it's by a misfiring booby trap or something more supernatural remains to be seen. Tempest has to prove that Secret Staircase isn't responsible for what happened to Julian, all while finally unraveling the threads that connect his death to her family's curse. Now that this series is wrapping its multibook mystery, it may have a chance to really take off. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
What do a family curse, an old theater, and the Secret Staircase Construction crew have in common? Former stage magician Tempest Raj, returning for the third installment in Pandian's popular cozy series (following The Raven Thief), is about to find out. Tempest's home-renovation company is being blamed by former client Julian Rhodes for causing his wife's "accidental" death. Meanwhile, the theater that Tempest has rented for her final performance appears to be haunted by the ghost of her mother. After Tempest finds Julian's corpse at the theater, the body count climbs, and she and her friends must discover not only who is setting the deadly booby traps at the theater but also how these events are tied to the deaths of Tempest's mother and aunt. The story arc of the Raj family curse concludes in this book, but there is still an opening for the series to continue with more magical illusions and classic mystery references to charm readers. VERDICT This locked-room mystery is a fun read for cozy fans, especially those who have kept up with Pandian's series.--Sarah Sullivan
