Death by Dragonfly

October 1, 2018
At the outset of Tesh’s winsome and amusing sixth Grace Street mystery (after 2017’s Baby, Take a Bow), Leo Pierson, an actor who looks like “the guy who always plays the kings and generals,” hires PI David Randall, who lives and works at a boarding house on Grace St. in Parkland, N.C., to recover several valuable items stolen from his Art Nouveau collection, notably an exquisite—and possibly cursed—glass dragonfly. Shortly after Pierson leaves the boarding house, Jordan Finley of the Parkland PD shows up and tells Randall that Pierson is a suspect in a possible murder case. Finley warns Randall to stay away from Pierson, but Randall forges ahead with the robbery investigation, aided by his friend and landlord, Camden, who has “considerable and erratic psychic ability.” Soon, people on the detective’s suspect list start turning up dead. The mystery plot is convincing and motives abound, but the vivid characters are the main draw, in particular the wryly observant Randall, who narrates the story with verve. Fans of cozies with a paranormal twist will be rewarded.

October 15, 2018
An art nouveau dragonfly entangles a detective and a psychic in a confusing case.Psychic Camden owns a boardinghouse filled with odd characters cordially disliked by his wife, Ellin, who runs the Psychic Network Service and wants Cam to quit his salesclerk job and do shows for the network. She's especially upset because Matt Graber, a fake psychic who uses two pythons in his act, has gone over her head to get a show on the network. One of Cam's tenants is David Randall, a private detective who often counts on Cam for help with his cases (Baby Take a Bow, 2017, etc.). David's newest client is Leo Pierson, a flamboyant actor whose home has recently been robbed of several valuable art nouveau pieces, including a stunning Lalique dragonfly reputed to be cursed. Although Pierson inherited them from his father, there's been an ongoing family feud, and the pieces that were stolen are reputed to hold a clue to a large fortune. Several habitués of the art world knew about the collection. Although Pierson doesn't suspect them, Randall thinks interviewing them is a great place to start. Meanwhile, museum curator Samuel Gallant has gone missing. When they visit a gallery, Cam has a vision of Gallant's dead body, and sure enough, the corpse is soon found in a storage closet. Kit, a musician who lives at the boardinghouse, is another psychic who's leaned on Cam to learn how to control his powers. Now it's Cam who's having problems and taking pills to help with his headaches and sudden frenetic waves of visions followed by no visions at all. Everyone in the boardinghouse pitches in to help Randall with the case, investigating people involved in the art world and digging up dirt on their pasts. In the end, Cam will need the help of those pythons to get over his uncontrollable visions.The mystery is nothing to write home about, but the high-maintenance housemates and talking pythons will certainly hold your attention.

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November 1, 2018
Number six in the Grace Street series finds private eye David Randall hot on the trail of an art thief (one of the stolen items is the titular glass dragonfly). Meanwhile, a celebrity faith healer is causing some consternation in the life of Camden, Randall's psychic friend. Oh, and there's a murder, and then another. But are these prosaic homicides, or are the deceased really victims of a curse attached to the dragonfly? The Grace Street novels balance on the thin line that separates mysteries with elements of fantasy from fantasies with elements of mainstream mysteries. This balance allows the author to reach a broad spectrum of readers, all of whom should be very pleased with this new novel. Tesh is a fine writer (she is also the author of the Madeline Maclin mystery series), and readers searching for something a little different need look no further than this genre-bending series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)