Beloved sleuth Tempest Raj (and her family’s incredibly unique recipes) return with “The Raven Thief”

We've made no secret about how we feel like Tempest Raj is one of the most interesting fictional sleuths to hit shelves in recent years. First introduced to readers last year in Gigi Pandian's “Under Lock and Skeleton Key” (which we reviewed here), Tempest is back and better than ever in "The Raven Thief," which was released just last week by Pegasus Crime.

Tempest, still on a break from her illusionist career, is working part-time for Secret Staircase Construction, her father’s home renovation company that specializes in secret staircases, hidden passages and more. But when their latest client -- a recent divorcee who is thrilled to be rid of her cheating husband --- invites Tempest and her beloved grandfather, Ash, to a faux seance to rid the place of the lingering spirit of her (very alive) ex-husband, novelist Corbin Colt, everyone is startled when Corbin's dead body suddenly makes an appearance.

Suspicion immediately falls on the eight people gathered around the seance table, specifically Grandpa Ash, the only one with blood on him. It's up to Tempest, her family, and an array of friends and co-workers to find out what really happened and clear Grandpa Ash’s name.

We received an ARC of this delightful novel from the good people at Pegasus Crime. You can purchase your own copy here.

Lakshmi: What did you think? I was so happy that this book was even stronger than the first book in the series (and we loved the first book!)

Asha: Once again I want Secret Staircase Construction to be a real company!

Lakshmi: I feel like we've really missed out in recent generations by not having secret doors and passageways (and yes, staircases!) in our homes

Asha: And I want this series adapted for tv so we can see these descriptions imagined in real life.

Lakshmi: You can play Tempest haha.

Asha: Yes!

Lakshmi: Tempest is also mixed race and makes fusion recipes, it's a perfect fit.

Asha: I still keep meaning to try the recipes in the back of the books!

Lakshmi: SAME, I need to try these curries! 

I do think the backdrop of the fusion of Tempest's family's favorite foods and how they blend their Scottish and Indian heritages in their lives is almost like another character at times. Grandpa Ash was the one who immigrated to Scotland from India and who began so many of these dishes and traditions.

Asha: It's true, food is very important in this book, or this series rather.

Lakshmi: Yes. It's interesting how food can sometimes be dismissed in discussions of identity (like how many times do we see people on Twitter say things like "oh, aside from recipes, how are you connected to your culture"?). But recipes and food are two of the most intimate ways we interact with culture on a daily basis.

But I also just loved the plot of this book because it is just a classic locked door mystery plot. We have an angry divorcee; we have a gathering of interesting characters who are all upset at the ex-husband; and then the ex-hubby out of nowhere dies in a very weird way!

Asha: Plus a detective who's new to the area and seems shady in his own way!

Lakshmi: Red herrings abound!! I love it.

Asha: AND creepy ravens who keep showing up.

Lakshmi: And of course Grandpa Ash and Tempest also immediately fall under suspicion because Tempest’s dad BUILT THE WEIRD STAIRCASES. She knows all of the places to hide -- literally.

Asha: And Grandpa Ash is a retired doctor, who has the dead man's blood on him because he immediately checked to see whether he was alive.

Lakshmi: 12:01 PM

Tempest’s dad’s company had recently finished renovating a section of Lavinia Kingsley’s house. Secret Staircase Construction didn’t do normal home renovations. They specialized in bringing real-life magic into people’s homes through touches like handcrafted sliding bookcases that opened when you pulled a favorite book from the shelf, hand-carved grotesques with hidden levers leading to secret rooms, and now that Tempest was working for her dad, personalized magical stories accompanied every nook. Fifty-five-year-old Lavinia Kingsley, who ran popular local café Veggie Magic, had kicked out her cheating husband a few months ago. Her soon-to-be ex-husband, Corbin,  had once used their large, luxurious hillside basement as an office for his writing. Now that he no longer lived there, Lavinia’s directive to Tempest’s dad was to turn the space from Corbin’s writing cave into a combination of a meeting space for her book club, a home office, and a reading nook. There was enough space for all three.

She dismantled the man cave!! Also, Lavinia Kingsley is the perfect old-timey mystery name.

Asha: It is.

Lavinia herself is mixed: white British/Japanese, and her Japanese mother is always underestimated. She had a fall and is using a wheelchair, but does she really need it? could SHE have been the murderer?

Lakshmi: I LOVED Lavinia's mother

Lavinia Kingsley had long ago gotten used to the confusion her name caused people. Named after a beloved relative of her father, she’d been born in Japan to a Japanese mother and British father who’d been studying Japanese literature. Her father had passed away several years ago at age ninety, and her eighty-seven-year-old mother had been fine on her own until she had a bad fall. Refusing to move into assisted living, Kumiko moved in with her daughter. Temporarily, Kumiko insisted. Needing a wheelchair annoyed her to no end because it made people question her competence even further, never considering that she might hold a PhD or speak an assortment of languages fluently. Lavinia had gotten her love of classic mysteries from her mother, who had a PhD in Japanese and comparative literature. Kumiko was a scholar of the honkaku style of classic Japanese detective fiction—roughly the equivalent of a Western whodunit with a fair-play puzzle plot—among other literary topics.

Kumiko is the one who realizes Corbin is cheating on her daughter, so she has motives galore as well.

Asha: Yep. I really love that everyone has a motive. And that Tempest's Grandma Mor is in Scotland totally unreachable, and unreachable in a totally plausible way.

Lakshmi: And I also just love how Gigi Pandian -- who is mixed race herself -- always writes these characters into her stories in a very natural and approachable way.

Human migration has always existed, which means the mixing of cultures and people has always existed!

Asha: Yes!

Lakshmi: And both Lavinia's and Grandpa Ash's histories reflect that. 

But also, Corbin was just the classic sleazy husband haha. So all of the classic mystery elements were there too. Not many people were fond of this dude!

Asha: So the book summary says "One murder. Four impossibilities. A fake séance hides a very real crime. We should talk about the other impossibilities.

Lakshmi: It felt like Clue!!! Which I actually just revisited recently.

Asha: One being that Corbin was supposedly 55 miles away right before his body appeared.

Lakshmi: Yes. Part of the reason the murder was so shocking was that no one knew he was in the house! (Why would he be, it's not his house anymore!)

Asha: Corbin's much-younger girlfriend is an influencer with a live-streamed show, and he was seen on video at her house 18 minutes before the 911 call. Her house is a 60-90 minute drive from Lavinia's.

Lakshmi: Intrigue!! Plus, it's a SEANCE, so everyone was holding hands when the body appeared. OR WERE THEY.

Asha: And the knife found sticking out of him was fake!

Lakshmi: So many twists in those three pages alone.

Asha: The characters have to question if what they know to be true is actually true! Which makes for a fun puzzle.

Lakshmi: Yes, this book has a frenetic energy that I like in a mystery.

Asha: Also woven into the mystery of the dead writer, is the mystery of what happened to Tempest's mother.

Lakshmi: Yes, but first back to Corbin. This was a truly evil thing to do:

“He took my old Remington typewriter.” Lavinia jabbed her finger at the steamer trunk that served as a coffee table. “The one with a katakana keyboard my mother gave me.” “Why does he want a Japanese typewriter?” “It’s a novelty that isn’t worth much.” Lavinia balled her hands into fists before relaxing them. “A true Japanese typewriter is incredibly complex. Katakana typewriters are simpler. The keys mirror Western letters on a standard keyboard. It was a gift from my mother, since it’s a linguistic combination of Japan and the West, like me. Corbin only wanted it because I love it.”

That last bit: “he wanted it because I loved it”, that's classic abuse sigh.

Asha: It is, but then they find out he was in New York when the typewriter was destroyed.

Lakshmi: Dude is always conveniently away.

Asha: It's amazing really.

Lakshmi: I also liked the way this book balanced the mystery with Tempest's ongoing personal journey.

Asha: I thought it felt less seamless than in the previous book, to be honest.

Lakshmi: Yes, the mystery was more complicated and did take more space. But Tempest is still trying to figure out who she is if she isn't a magician, she doesn't know what to make of Sanjay or where she wants that to go ultimately. There are a lot of things, including what you said earlier: what happened to her mother.

As we know, Emma Raj has been missing for quite some time. It's a death(?)/mystery that looms over the family.

Asha: In this case, Corbin is connected because, after Emma's disappearance, he pretended that they had been good friends. It got him some media coverage, which is what he wanted presumably, having not had a bestseller in many years.

Lakshmi: Yes, so he is such a snake that he is willing to capitalize on their tragedy, which adds to suspicion against the family. Like we said, no one liked the dude.

Asha: And they all had good reasons not to!

Lakshmi: A classic locked-door mystery.