THE MASTERMIND PLOT

After assisting her uncle, Detective Bruce Snow, solve a mystery at the Rosemount Hotel in The Midnight Tunnel (2011), aspiring sleuth Suzanna Snow visits her paternal grandmother in Boston, where she’s immediately immersed in a perplexing case of arson and art theft. Arriving at her grandmother’s elegant townhouse, Zanna discovers Uncle Bruce still sees her as the “pesky eleven-year-old girl who’d undermined his case at the Rosemount and had made a fool of him.” To Uncle Bruce’s dismay, Zanna becomes involved in the Horne fires case when Adele Horne, her classmate at Miss Lydia Doucette’s Academy for Young Ladies, enlists her help to resolve a string of sinister warehouse fires. Adele’s wealthy father owns the burned warehouses, where he stored valuable works of art. As she tackles the complex case, Zanna’s pursued by a stranger who reveals himself as Matthew Leighton, her long-lost maternal grandfather, a master thief and Uncle Bruce’s chief suspect. Conflicted over her grandfather’s disturbing past, Zanna finds herself in a perilous position as she relies on her instincts to unravel the twisted case. Set among Boston’s staid brownstones in 1904, the suspenseful plot unfolds from Zanna’s first-person perspective, punctuated by her pithy observations.

Fans of Suzanna Snow’s first mystery will cheer her latest adventure.