Mystery

On the tiny Caribbean island of Mill Walk, a ten-year-old boy named Tom Pasmore is tragically killed in a traffic accident-well, almost killed. Miraculously, he survives, but as he grows up the accident leads this brilliant boy to an obsession with death, and particulary two unsolved mysteries-one in the present, the murder of the sister of the island's finance minister; the other in the past, the murder of a neighbor and friend of Tom's grandfather in the resort town of Eagle Lake, Wisconsin. He is aided in his investigations by one of the great detectives in modern fiction-Lamont von Heilitz, known as "The Shadow," now retired and living as an eccentric and despised neighbor of Tom on Mill Walk, whose own fascination with the Eagle Lake death may have more to it than intellectual curiosity. Indeed, it is difficult to know whose past is more closely linked to the murder-von Heilitz's or Tom's family's. Mystery is so rich, so masterfully plotted, so marvelously constructed, so entertaining that to reveal any more of its story would be unfair to reader and author alike. As he has so often demonstrated, Peter Straub has the miraculous ability to take a genre and so infuse it with invention and originality that it transcends its basic form, becoming a novel of astonishing complexity and depth. Here we not only have a fair "mystery" with an astonishing solution and a breathtaking climax, we also have three-demensional characters, a moving and satisfying love story, a wonderful evocation of the milieu of the very rich, both in the Caribbean and in Wisconsin, and a profound undercurrent that permeates the book and makes it resonate. For in Mystery Peter Straub is not only investigating two fictional crimes, he is also after the greatest mystery of all:the mystery of life and death. Copyright 1990 by Seafront Corporation. Published by the Penguin Group.