This is a romantic mystery; heavy on the mystery, light on the romance. This is published by a Christian fiction publisher so there is, of course, a Christian bent to the story.  But this is not a bad thing for all you agnostics and atheists out there.  I read a lot of speculative fiction so if I can suspend disbelief of dragons and interdimensional travel to enjoy a story, I can also do so for a story that includes God. Admittedly, I do not particularly look for Christian fiction but Revell has been generous with their review copies and this mystery beckoned to me.  And, boy, is there a lot of mystery.

Lily Temple is an actress in “flickers” in England at the beginning of the 20^th century.  “Flickers” were so named due to the infant movie technology causing a flicker to the images.  Lily was employed by a couple who showed popular outdoor movies in an elegant garden.  Not only did she act, but she wrote the story and did a lot of the special effects on film.  But Lily is there for more than a job.  She spent a lot of time in that garden when she was a child and the stories she wrote for the screen were actually a message to someone…

When the film company rented the garden, they built a special building to project the images onto and when they excavated the hill, they found a buried box with a blue sapphire.  The company owner never imagined the gem to be anything but paste so allowed Lily to wear it in her role.  Lily had not imagined she’d ever see that particular gem again… But the real owner saw it in the flicker; also never expecting to see it again.  But she really needed it returned to her family so she hired a very special investigator, Peter Driscoll, to discover if it was real and to return it to her.

This special investigator only hires himself out to the wealthy and by word-of-mouth.  He is intrigued by the story of the famous gem and after meeting Lily, he is now intrigued by her story; because, above all else she may be, Lily is a consummate storyteller.  Despite his charm, Lily is not about to part with any information about the gem…or her own past.

So, the overarching mystery is, of course, the elusive truth about Lily Temple: who is she, where did she come from, is the gem actually hers?  And who does she wait for in the garden?  But that is not the only mystery.  There is also the small girlchild who haunts the garden, stealing food when possible; and who might have been the only witness to the apparent theft of the gem.  Peter, being a rather singular detective, becomes more than a little interested in who she might be and that becomes another mystery for him to pursue.  In the course of all this, he is approached by a young woman’s father and hired to meet with an injured soldier to discover whether the young man is truly the presumed-dead fiancé, or an imposter.  Having both a need to be more close to Lily to learn some bit of truth from her but also needing a young woman to impersonate the fiancée, he persuades her to help in the case.  It turns into quite a bit more than a simple investigation and while their pursuit of the truth does not impact the main story line, it give our protagonists a reason to know each other better.  And what Lily learns is that Peter is that most rare specimen: a truly good man.  Peter learns that Lily, while an accomplished actress, has a great many suspicious talents; like lock picking.  This only serves to increase his interest while he tries to fit so many disparate features of Lily into a cohesive image.  Rather like film editing.

As the reader, we are not any more informed than Peter.  We, too, wish to know who Lily waits for in the garden; maybe a long lost father who may or may not have been unfairly incarcerated and may or may not have been a gardener who taught her stories.  And did Lily steal the gem and how does it factor into the missing gardener?

The prose is lovely and elegant; much like we might imagine the upper class would speak in that era; using semantics to prove how clever, well-read or intelligent they were…unlike today.  The mysteries are well-plotted and the dialogue is excellent.  I totally enjoyed both Peter and Lily, even though their characters were painted pretty broadly.  While Lily’s origins and intentions were obscured, we still got a strong sense of who she was.  Peter was so good, he was positively transparent.  But Peter’s goodness and a strong Christian theme was necessary for the ultimate resolution – which I did not see coming until about halfway through.  The Christian theme was not gratuitous; it was essential for the plot and I can appreciate that.  Throwing in God and worship when irrelevant to the plot only annoys me; but making that the focal point was quite warranted.

Truly, the only quibble I have occurred near the end.  The author deliberately played with the reader in a particular scene, causing me to trip over the words in an attempt to discern whether the author really expected me to believe those events; in which case, the story would have seemed to have jumped the rails.  Thankfully, it only lasted a few paragraphs before she slyly showed me the truth.  But I didn’t care for it a bit; it didn’t belong in the story.  ~~  Catherine Book