Originally posted June 7, 2024. “The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized all impossible crimes can be summed up in one word: ‘Misdirection.’” In a genre full of mystery writers-turned-detectives, mystery-readers-turned-detectives, and mystery-actors-turned-detectives, an amateur sleuth who gets into the gig because her family’s construction company builds secret passages was a delightfully funny innovation that immediately drew me to Under Lock & Skeleton Key —the first in Gigi Pandian’s latest series, the Secret Staircase mysteries—which tackles a devious locked room from the perspective of an unusual type of expert. Tempest Raj is an elite Vegas stage magician ( another magician !) living under the cloud of a family curse: the eldest child of each Raj generation is fated to die by magic. The curse claimed Tempest’s aunt Elspeth in a gruesome guillotine magic trick, followed by her mother Emma in a suspicious stage disappearance, and it seems to ...