UNDER LOCK & SKELETON KEY

A stage magician solves a locked-room puzzle.

Tempest Raj had a glorious career. The child of five generations of Indian magicians, she followed her half-Indian, half-Scottish mother into a profession that allowed her to thrill rapt audiences with baffling illusions. But that was then. Now, still in her 20s, she lives with her grandparents in their Bay Area treehouse with her rabbit, Abracadabra, her closest confidant. Her mother is gone, disappeared and presumed dead by suicide. Her father is busy running his business, Secret Staircase Construction, a specialty firm dedicated to creating hidden staircases, secret rooms, and concealed gardens. Her successful Vegas show has been closed after an accident almost took her life and prompted a series of ruinous lawsuits against her. At the end of her rope, she agrees to help her dad with his latest project, the installation of a hidden room in multimillionaire Calvin Knight’s mansion. Her first look at the project is almost her last, though, since her initial inspection dislodges the body of her stage double, Cassidy Sparrow, the very person she holds responsible for her career-halting accident, from a hidden space with no windows or doors. Things get even more baffling when Tempest sees the ghost of her mother playing her signature tune on a violin. Impossible as it seems, Tempest feels pressed to solve the enigma, because—thanks to a family curse on the eldest of each generation—she doesn’t know whether Cassidy’s killer was aiming for her double or herself.

The real problem: All that nonstop enchantment makes magic seem pretty boring.