Drum-time represents the ancient ways, when the indigenous people’s lives revolved around the reindeer whose migration they followed, and the drums they used for healing and spirituality.  The Lapps, or Sami as they called themselves, defined the end of drum-time as when the Christians came.

This is a traditionally structured novel – no interspersing of past and present – which is itself a message.  The groundwork is laid and the plot builds to an inexorable climax. The old must give way to the power of the new; the two cannot coexist.

The setting is developed: the stark beauty of ice and snow, the constant cold and need for heavy furs, the inadequacy of the smoking hearth, breaking ice in the bucket to make coffee.  A minister (based on a real person) preaches in the small church where he has been sent to convert the heathen. The Sami come to town for supplies and the now available alcohol; they occasionally go to church. Main characters are introduced: some are herders; two are the minister’s daughters.

As the story begins, both the townspeople and the herders are stunned when a Sami leader converts and joins the church leaving his son to manage their herd alone. At this time, the two daughters also face choices.  One falls in love with a herder and follows him; the other stays home and dutifully marries the shopkeeper. Their personal stories illustrate the grander turmoil.

This is a perceptive portrayal of the conflict between the modern state and church versus traditional ways of life.  It is also a superbly told story with sympathetic characters.  I so wanted things to work out well for them.

In an encyclopedia of detail, they tell about the “dreamers;” people who brought the first fruit to the U.S. over a hundred years ago.  Small orchards were planted; the first avocados were sold to luxury restaurants; the industry was on its way.

At first glance, it might seem like this book would have a limited audience.  How many people really want to know about the avocado’s journey to their plate? But it isn’t a narrow story.  Anyone who has tried to make a living in agriculture will sympathize with sudden freezes, root rot, fungus infections. Anyone connected with the produce industry will understand the difficulties of standardization, developing a packing system, storing, cooling, transporting.  Gardeners will be interested in pollination, varieties, soil types, fertilization.

Those of us in the Oregon wine industry have lived through a similar story as we saw our new industry develop.  We also had to learn how to grow and produce our product and at the same time create a market for it.  Our task may have been easier though, as potential customers knew what wine was.  Not so for the avocado.

One of the most charming parts of the book are the recipes at the beginning of each chapter. They are chronological and it was fun to start with recipes from the early 1900s and watch them change.  I read every one.

Avocado Sailboat Salad

It is one of the easiest salads in the world to prepare. Cut one of the large avocados into quarters.  You now have an avocado boat.  To make it a sailboat, just insert a square cracker, point downward, into the prow of the boat.  Fill the boat with a cargo of your favorite fruit – little oranges are particularly good looking sliced, using a cheese cracker sail.           Los Angeles Times 1932

Reading this book and writing about it was a tribute to my botanist friend Maureen who lived her life to the fullest.  Well into her 70s, she continued to work at a job she loved, grafting avocados, some from the seeds we saved for her, helping to develop the next new variety.

I haven’t written about the “and More” part of Old Ladies Read and More for a while, but I’ve been inspired lately as I have seen my 55+ friends take up new activities. 

Here’s a joke I read that will appeal to those who still can remember their high school French:

Two catamarans are in a race.  One is called, “One two three” and the other is “un deux trois.”  Which one won?

“One two three” because “Un deux trois cat sank”

In her story, the Jesuits, who have a history of traveling to new worlds, launch a crew of eight to find the source.  What has been heard at the observatory is music, beautiful haunting singing. The structure of the book is a horizontal V; two story lines, starting far apart, meet on the planet of Rakhat. One of the lines begins with goose bumps, when Jimmy, manning the telescope, realizes what he is listening to, thus setting in motion the odyssey to outer space.  The second plot line starts at the opposite end, when one of the priests returns to earth in disgrace years later, and then moves back in time to his experience on the planet.

The fantasy of a new world and space travel provides the platform for Russell to explore religious and philosophical questions, which are what the book is really about.  She is particularly interested in God’s involvement in our lives.  If God loves human beings plus controls everything that happens in the world, (including the falling sparrow), why do terrible things happen to us?  How can we continue to have faith?

A second, less overt question, arises at the end of the book as the author examines just how much control more intelligent powerful beings should have over less able species. Raising them for food is the example but the morality of eating meat is not the issue; Russell is interested in bigger, more existential topics.

In another, the daughter, grown and a playwright, has produced a bitingly unpleasant play about that summer together.  In a third, the daughter is having dinner out with her mother who is loud and drunk and long divorced from the father. The possible boyfriend preens and thinks he is God’s gift.  

And yet – I kept reading. The emotions depicted were raw and immediate. Underneath their self-absorption and entitlement, the characters were vulnerable human beings craving love and attention – and I couldn’t help but be sympathetic.  Maybe this book is a good lesson for our time. The people we dislike want the same things as everyone else and often have a hard time getting them.

But it wasn’t what I hoped for.  This is a series of vignettes about the very old – late 80’s and 90’s and how they manage to get together and what they talk about. For example – two of them meet at the usual café for lunch.  They reminisce, joke, make future plans, but have to leave when their adult children come to collect them.  One is in a wheelchair and the other no longer drives. They will meet again whenever the children can arrange it.  In another story, there is the twenty minute rule: they may talk about their health issues for only twenty minutes. In all the little stories, there is this large looming undercurrent of the debilities of old age.  Too realistic?

To end on a happy note:

It makes me laugh every time.

Richard Holmes in The Age of Wonder talks about a different time, approximately 1800, when poets could still understand, discuss, and write about new discoveries, and the average educated person could grasp what was going on. “Science” was a new word to describe the excitement and advances of the age.

It was a time of discovery.  There were first visits to Tahiti, Hawaii, and the African interior. William Herschel and his sister Caroline developed new telescopes and realized there were millions more galaxies (never mind stars) out there, and that the universe was not static but evolving. Humphry Davy articulated the scientific method and started the branch of science known as chemistry. Men doffed their hats when they watched a balloon actually rise from the ground under its own power.

The book was sometimes funny such as when Davy, writing to the woman he was wooing, told her that her letters caused a sensation in him higher than “exhilatory gas.”  True, he was doing air/gas experiments, but still.

This nonfiction book is too detailed, but it gives a good description of the wonder and fears of people as new information contrasted with old beliefs. It gives a picture of the time which was the beginning of today’s technological revolution.

In “The Oval Lady” she features a ten-foot-tall adolescent who can turn herself into a horse. There is “The Debutante” whose main character sends a dressed-up hyena to take her place at dinner.  The stories increase in weirdness from there. 

But the points of these stories are ideas that a 21^st century reader can embrace.  Carrington doesn’t want women to be confined to expected, strait jacketed roles.  She doesn’t think women exist only to inspire men but are capable of being great artists themselves. She wants to be free to innovate and that she certainly does.

Her stories are just a few pages long and can be found free online.  It’s easy to read one or two to get a taste, and you might be inspired to read a bit about Surrealism.  I read them with an art museum book group and learned about a different world.

Hayden was made to feel powerless and now she will literally take away power from everyone else. In this thriller we are tutored on details about the US electricity grid – and how susceptible it is to a terrorist attack.  So many cyber security organizations are mentioned it is hard to keep track.  The main character is a brilliant idealist hot on the trail. We recognize the criminally inclined president (during his first term).

I admire Stacey Abrams, the woman from Georgia who served in its House of Representatives, has been responsible for expanding voting rights, plus finds time to write novels.  This however, isn’t my favorite kind of mystery.  I like something cozy that I can relax with, not something difficult to follow that makes me worry about Armageddon.  For those who like something intricate, fast paced, and exciting, it might be just the thing.

The book is very good at foretelling and setting the scene.  It opens one icy day with the family out hunting geese.  As one nears, Reuben is handed the rifle by his older brother.  He is now man enough to take the shot.  It is only the first of many adult behaviors that will be asked of him.  While I’m not usually fond of books about hunting, especially birds, this is a rural family hunting for dinner. 

The pace of the story is slow with plenty of storytelling and meandering, but tension grows.  By the end I was galloping through to see what would happen.  Afterwards, I went back to slowly read one of the final scenes which was as beautiful a description of a possible afterlife as I have ever read.

I waded ashore with measureless relief…the bank was a waving slope of knee high grasses…the water appeared gold as on your favorite river at sunup… moving up from the river the humming began to swell – it was magnetic, a sound uncurling into song and light…

While I wouldn’t describe this as a “Christian” book, there are strong overtones of faith and religion, and the miracles are real.  It is not magical realism because everyone recognizes that the events are extraordinary, thus raising questions about the presence of the supernatural in our lives.

This is a formulaic story – two people meet but hardly pay attention to each other.  Little by little they do start to notice, and attraction develops. Troubles intervene. But the pleasure of the novel is in the details and the story is compelling. How exactly will they finally get together?

The coast-to-coast walk across the middle of England evokes the beauty of a wild landscape as well as the memorable experience of pouring rain and fog. Cozy pubs in the evening are a nice counterpoint. The characters are very likeable.  I would have been disappointed if it hadn’t ended well.

Cal, a retired policeman from the states is helping to rescue and mentor somewhat neglected and delinquent Trey, a bright teenage girl whose father has abandoned the family.  When Dad suddenly returns home their relationship is threatened.

Dad didn’t come alone.  He brought an Englishman who claims his family came from their small Irish town.  This acquaintance has stories, passed down for generations, of a vein of gold running through the town.  The townspeople, suffering from a drought and worried about their farms, need distraction and listen to the story.  The scene is set.

As the plot unfolds, the author explores the customs and ethics of the small village.  She examines the loyalty friends and family have for each other and the difference between the legal and the moral.

French, known as The First Lady of Irish Crime, is a successful mystery writer whose stories have been made into a television series, Dublin Murders.  I also enjoyed her short essay on why people like to read mysteries which you can find at this link, Why Mystery Books are So Satisfying.

Some of their comments were thought provoking.  They ask, “Who is wise?” and answer “The person who can learn from everyone.”  I liked their definition of forgiveness: “giving up the resentment to which you are entitled and offering friendlier attitudes than they are entitled.”  “A well-aged person is someone people want to visit not have to.”

A lot of the information was a rehash of ideas I had heard before. There is much talk about gratitude, which must be an “in” subject. Wisdom sounds desirable, but do I really want to spend my old age on self-improvement so that I may become more compassionate, generous, forgiving, grateful, patient?  Whew!  Maybe wisdom, and old age, are about more than that.

Possibility is a physical sensation and there’s nothing like it.  I remember the first time I felt its thrill, listening to my father describe something that was going well in his lab…he fairly trembled with excitement…

She writes vignettes about what she did during Covid, memories that surfaced, people and things she used to love. Through these delightful stories, there is insight into isolation, loneliness, memory loss, paying attention, nameless dread, and anxiety. Here are some favorite quotes:

In the intro: Don’t smile at us as if we’re cute or pat our hand and call us dear.  A little respect please.

You can do a lot with a cane; you can use its rubber tip to shove a door shut, which is satisfying if you’re in a bad mood; …

 Unforgettable advice: Always take a cookie when the plate is passed.

I can think of my failing memory as an accomplishment.  I am finally living in the moment.

While the first book was chock full of serious suggestions and advice on how to improve, the second was realistic about how people think and behave – and it was funny. 

In Women of the Silk, Gail Tsukiyama tells what life was like for girls like Pei, our main character. Raised on a small rural farm that had fish and mulberry leaves for its cash crops, she was taken by her father one morning to the nearby town. Without any idea of what was happening, she was dropped off at the factory dormitory. She was eight years old.

The other girls and young women, all in the same situation befriended her.  The relationships among them unfold against the backdrop of the silk factory.  We learn how silk was produced and the conditions of factory life. 

This segment of Pei’s life ends when she is in her 20s and escapes to Hong Kong to avoid the Japanese who have invaded China. I wonder if the author’s Chinese ancestors had direct experience with this time as she has written before about the brutality of the Japanese army.

Morgan was interested in rare manuscripts and had haphazardly amassed a valuable collection.  He was looking for a librarian to bring some order to it when his nephew introduced him to Belle.  She was a jewel.  Not only did she catalog his acquisitions, she also guided him in adding to his collection.  Rare books, first printings from the original printing press, illuminated manuscripts, all were her forté. She could spot a forgery or misrepresentation. Plus, she was a skilled negotiator when most women, in the early 1900s, just didn’t do that sort of thing.

The second story in this book of historical fiction was about Belle’s personal life.  She was born a “colored girl” in the South just after Reconstruction.  Her educated parents enjoyed success in that period, a respite between slavery and Jim Crow.

As Reconstruction passed and federal troops left the South, segregation and prejudice once again became ascendant. The family moved north and faced a choice.  They were light skinned and could pass as white.  Should they?  Belle’s father said no and fought for equality.  Her mother, less optimistic, said yes and took the children, thus giving them opportunities they never would have had.  Belle, moving in sophisticated circles in a high-powered job, presented herself as white with a Portuguese ancestor to account for her darker skin. 

The private library she directed became public one hundred years ago.  As part of its centennial celebration last year, there was an exhibit honoring Belle, acknowledging her accomplishments and mixed-race background. Her secret had been kept until 1999 when a Morgan researcher discovered her birth certificate listing her as “colored” and naming her father, Richard Greener, who was a well-known black advocate for racial justice.

This newest detective, Matthew, was raised in an evangelical community in rural England where he found belonging and acceptance until he came out as gay and married his love.  Shunned by the church and rejected by his parents, he found a new community in the police force and rose to the rank of detective inspector.

In this story he and his two sergeants are called to solve the murder of a popular sailing figure, dead in a small boat apparently arranged to be found.  Matthew remembers the place.  It was here that he spent a happy childhood as part of the Brethren. But now, pouring rain, roaring winds, and high tides add to the gloomy atmosphere as the three officers follow a dangerous trail that twists through old flames, jealousy, illness and aging.

This one tells the story of a man who visited the undersea dragon palace.  After being entertained there for a few days, he returned home to find he had been gone three hundred years. I was reminded of our Rip Van Winkle story and interested to see the same fable about this modern physics concept (of time moving at different speeds), in two very different cultures.

The indigenous view is one of gratitude, respect, and reciprocity.  Nature gives us much and we have a responsibility to return the favor.  All living things are seen as persons and native language reflects this.  Trees, for example, are “she” not “it.”  How much harder to cut a tree down if you think of her as a living person, a “she,” instead of an “it.”

Kimmerer’s essays describe her experiences as a mother, botanist, teacher, and Native American. She harvests maple syrup and makes baskets. She takes her students into the woods and on farm visits to experience the concepts she teaches.  Those nice Thanksgiving squash are actually swollen ovaries?  Yuck. There is an abundance of scientific information told in a delightful way.

One of the best chapters, Collateral Damage, was about salamanders, those cold-blooded often unappealing little beings that are never poster animals for endangered species. She writes that when the first spring rain comes into the forest when the temperature has reached 42 degrees, the salamanders rise through the humus and head towards their natal ponds.  The females, swollen with eggs, go first.  A couple of days later, the males go.  They get together in a very particular kind of watery environment.  Any writer who can make the moving and mating of salamanders both beautiful and fascinating is gifted indeed!

The book is slow starting; it is also repetitious.  Her portrayal of the success of the Native American lifestyle was idealized. Kimmerer herself tells us there was a “hunger moon” in the winter when starvation was common. But the essays are thought-provoking; the descriptions evoke the best days in nature; and the book made me see the world from a different perspective.

The characters are Nigerian who live there or who have moved to the states. Their culture controls many of the stories but some are universal.  Mothers die; children die; mothers sell their children; they reject them. The stories explore the bond between mothers and children, different facets of becoming a mother, things that go wrong along the way.

In a short time Ajose-Fisher’s characters pull at us so we are invested in their outcome. There is little backstory and sometimes the lack of detail is confusing, but the feelings of the woman or child are very clear.

What does the author mean by the title?  Does she want to dispel idealistic notions about both mothers and gods? Is the mother the most primal, God like influence on her child? I leave it to the reader to decide.

But Maud was no fool. She soon figured out what the neighbor wanted and devised a plan to keep her from getting it. But then…what? Maud! Not what I expected.

Helene Tursten has given us a different kind of main character – one who plays the old lady card, and anything else she can get her hands on, very well.  Of course, we don’t approve, but yet… Each of the five chapters in this short, small book is a tongue-in-cheek separate story about Maud’s problem-solving capabilities.  It is easily read in an afternoon.

Before she wrote short stories, Tursten wrote serious detective novels set in Stockholm. Check out my new Facebook page for a short review of her first, Detective Inspector Huss.

What was important about this man and where he lived?  Blair eventually became known as George Orwell, author of 1984 and Animal Farm, and there is little documentation of this part of his life.

The plot is straightforward.  Blair goes through his training and apprenticeship but does not find success. Although he forces himself to do the work, he hates the job and does not get along with his peers.  He lasts only a few months in each posting and then is transferred.

The setting is much more interesting.  How the British treat the Burmese they are supposed to be helping is appalling to a 21^st century reader – not just in their capacity as policemen, but in their personal and social lives.  Blair, a man of his times, is embarrassed to be related to his uncle who is married to a local woman, and worse yet has a half caste child, his cousin, shunned by both the British and natives.

The flavor of Burma, the tropics, suffuses the story.  “the shimmering fish scales of small waves on the surface of the sea…the sun sinking like an apricot…a mass of twitching bats, clustered together, jostling their loose wings…the brown wastes of inland Burma, the scabby bush, the naked children jumping into foul creeks…”

But it is the character of the budding writer that is the crux of the book. Theroux’s portrayal is a masterclass in a young person’s discovery of who he is.  At first, Blair is determined to make a success of his job.  He salutes; he studies; he follows orders; but it is not for him.   Eventually, Blair acknowledges his rebellious thoughts; he searches for ways to find comfort in an intolerable situation; he finds and names a second person hidden inside himself; he imagines leaving the police and Burma.  In incremental steps, the writer emerges.

The epigraph, quoted from George Orwell’s Burmese Days, reads “There is a short period in everyone’s life when his character is fixed forever.”

His train is met by Matsu, the taciturn house caretaker. As they slowly become acquainted, Matsu begins to include Stephen in his daily activities. He takes him shopping, introduces him to an old friend in the nearby village.  Most important, he takes him to meet Sachi who has made her home in the leper village in the mountains. Others have the burden of sickness as well.

Stephen likes Sachi and he soon realizes the depth of her relationship with Matsu and the loyalty and commitment that bind them despite her illness.  At the same time, Stephen learns of his father’s affair and sees the marriage of his parents disintegrate. Several additional relationships are explored; each more complex than they first appear.

Both Matsu and Sachi have made beautiful gardens.  His is rich with cherry blossoms and chrysanthemums; hers is raked stone. The beauty they create is hard won. When destruction comes, which it does, they rebuild.  It is a symbol of their lives.

The setting is pre-World War II when Japan’s military is sweeping through China and approaching Hong Kong.  Stephen’s parents send for him before it is too late to come home.  He has become a full participant in the rural life he previously dreaded and is heartbroken to leave.  As in the story above, it has been a short period of his life that will affect him forever. The first words of the novel, “I wanted to find my own way…” have more than one meaning.

A young Indian bride, married three years ago when she was still in school, has just joined her husband, a newly established doctor, to begin married life.  They are invited to dinner where she meets his British colleagues for the first time.  As dessert, carrot halwa, is served, a scream comes from the kitchen.  Kaveri, bright and curious, figures out a way to get near the murder scene. The victim is a pimp well known to the police. 

The scene is set to show many aspects of life, British colonial rule, upper class educated Indians, servants, poverty, and the seamier side of gangs and prostitution.  Kaveri is fortunate in her arranged marriage as her husband, Ramu, is forward thinking.  He supports her interests and desire for further education.  They make a good team – as a married couple and as sleuths in this cozy debut mystery.

He and his second in command, Jean-Guy, and Inspector Isabelle Lacoste must decipher the cryptic clues in time to prevent a catastrophe. Who exactly can they trust? Old friends appear but they might be lying. Sanctuaries, monasteries hidden from the world, find themselves not as safe and removed as they thought. Domestic terrorism leaves no place to hide.

Balancing the fear and danger of their work is the refuge of home. Readers of Penny’s books will be familiar with this cast – loving spouses and children, noisy small grandchildren, the eclectic residents of Three Pines who are best friends as well as neighbors.

Her descriptions of place capture the mood and flavor. Here is the monastery of Saint Gilbert Entre les Loups: “Even in the weakening light, the place was magical.  From the outside it looked frightening, foreboding. But inside? It was glorious. The windows high up in the long, long corridor captured every last ray available in the dying light and magnified it, brought it to life.  The stone hallway was giddy with the evening sun.”

Louise Penny is at the top of her form.  She has written a thrilling page turner, a mythic story about the battle between good and evil, symbolized by two warring wolves.

Minutely observed by the octopus in captivity, Tova works at night cleaning the aquarium. She needs the job for something to do, not the money. A recent widow, Tova also still mourns a beloved son who died at 18. The second main character, Cameron, has just been fired, again. His girlfriend threw him out. Marcellus, near the end of his four-year life span, realizes he can give them a gift.

This is an especially well plotted novel. All the information is necessary and fits together into a satisfying whole. No excessive rambling!  The human characters at junctures in their lives are sympathetic. And who could not like the feisty being with three hearts who thinks that humans can occasionally, just occasionally, be remarkably bright creatures. The point of the novel – how an act of kindness can change a life – makes this a beautiful heart-warming story.

This multi layered novel is definitely adult fiction. It is philosophical and peppered with pointed observations. “Logic and reason are never the best weapons in an irrational world. It’s humor” (An apt suggestion for our current time.)

Reclusive Rintaro Natsuki has spent as much time as possible with his grandfather in his secondhand bookshop. The store is unusual in that it doesn’t contain best sellers, but classics from around the world.  When the grandfather dies and leaves the shop to him, Rintaro must figure out how to make his way in this altered world. Unexpectedly, there are helpers – a pretty girl from school, a popular athletic senior, a kindly aunt, and yes, a talking cat.

Rintaro undertakes the hero’s journey where he must find his way through the labyrinths and confront the monsters, both physical and metaphorical. All the monsters are connected to the mistreatment of books. But more deeply, this mistreatment is a commentary on modern society.

Finally, there is the exploration of the value of books. What good are they? At the end, Matsukawa provides a satisfying answer. “Books teach us empathy, how to care about others. That’s the power of books.  We learn about the hearts and minds of other people besides ourselves.”

Birds who compete for resources during breeding season, band together during the dark days. “They cooperate as compensation for leafless trees and cold temperatures, working together to find food sources and evade predators, staying warm by flocking up…In the dark days already gathering, we will need to do our best to look out for one another and for the creatures we love.”

John’s father was a preacher, and the Pentecostal faith is the basis of the family’s life.  Wrestling with sin and evil is constant.  The father, Gabriel, is determined to keep John from sin, something he is all too familiar with.

The teen’s story is told in third person, but John’s aunt, father and mother all tell theirs in first person lending an intimacy to their disclosures.  This black family speak of their heartbreaks, their beating down, their rage.  The church, with its singing, wailing in tongues, emotional prayers for salvation, offers a refuge.  Racism is not dwelled upon, but feelings about whites are clear from the few bitter remarks.

The family’s expectation is that John will become a preacher.  While John wants to be “good,” he must deal with his awakening sexuality and his feelings towards the attractive 17-year-old male minister in their church. 

The book is semi-autobiographical.  Baldwin grew up in a similar environment, wanted to be a preacher, knows his Bible quotations.  He is an astute critic of such a church and its teachings.

There are three extremely powerful, emotional passages; in two, someone is saved and in the third, someone succumbs to sin (sex). His compelling language, use of imagery, character dissection, and finally the portrayal of the evangelical life all illustrate the depth of Baldwin’s talent and show why this book is considered his masterpiece and an American classic.

After just two weeks, someone in the club is murdered and the members look at the two new women suspiciously.  But they are the ones with experience in this sort of thing and join together to investigate. Peg’s pushy nosiness and Rose’s soft touch are just the right combo for eliciting information.

The other main characters in this mystery are Peg’s three standard poodles who provide her, a widow, with company and support.  She and her husband had raised dogs in the past and she is still an accomplished judge at shows.  Rose is more a cat person.

It’s a good plot – well paced and just difficult enough.  I didn’t guess the ending.  This is a story that will especially appeal to the dog lover (especially poodles), the bridge player, and anyone wanting to relax with a mystery that is cozy rather than a thriller.

The women in her family, who always chose to raise their daughters alone, were often shunned by their small town – although those they helped with their specialized knowledge felt differently.  When two teenage girls disappeared and were later found dead in the pond on the Moon farm, accusing fingers pointed their way.  Unable to prove anything but easily convinced of their guilt, law enforcement did little to find the real culprits.

When her grandmother dies, Lizzie returns to the farm to get it ready to sell.  She misses this grandmother she loved and determines to honor her by clearing her name and hopefully finding the real murderer of the two girls.  She is helped by the handsome neighbor.  No one who has read a book before will have a hard time guessing what happens.  But how exactly it works out is very well done and we have an enjoyable mystery with a bit of “magick.”