DREAM STALKER

A modern-day witch calls on a powerful magical ability in order to solve a murder in Gardner’s debut paranormal mystery.

Before she commits suicide, Kitty, a homeless woman with Alzheimer’s disease, hands her friend—a Salem, Massachusetts, witch named Lily Scott—a key and exhorts her to “find the truth.” Later, Lily finds Jolene Williams, a witch and a leader of the Dark Moon Coven who wants to take over St. Bridget’s Homeless Shelter, horribly murdered. Lily investigates using her secret power to travel in people’s dreams—or “dream-walk”—but it’s an ability that she’s hesitant to use due to a past tragedy. The novel presents a thoroughly researched view of witchcraft and the Wicca religion, as when Ann, the owner of St. Bridget’s, tells Lily she owes Jolene money, and Lily reflects on “The Wiccan ‘Three-Fold Law’…[which] warns that whatever harm you do to others will return to you three times over.” Sometimes the sentences become appealingly punchy, such as when Lily, as a youngster, surreptitiously uses her grandmother’s Book of Secrets to dream-walk for the first time and meets a figure called the Dream Stalker: “I can’t move, can’t run. A figure appears out of the fog….The Stalker grabs me…I can’t breathe. He drags me backwards.” However, one wishes that the novel better balanced Lily’s characterization with the demands of the mystery genre, especially as the narrative is rendered in the first person. Even so, the dream-walking sequences stand out: “Thousands of embedded crystal stones sparkle along the walls on either side of me. Each stone stores a memory.” The novel also contains several shocking plot twists that will keep readers compelled all the way to the novel’s conclusion.

A satisfying whodunit with a persuasive folk-magic element.