They Danced by the Light of the Moon: An Andy Gammon Mystery

Pagel plays with the everything-old-is-new-again theme in her delightful second Andy Gammon mystery (after 2006's Here's the Church, Here's the Steeple). Andy, a transplanted Midwesterner, doesn't have to try hard to persuade mother-in-law Mayta to join her at the posh grand reopening of the Grand Hotel of the Atlantic on the New Hampshire coast. Victorian architecture is only part of the attraction, however. Further tickling Andy's insatiable curiosity is the lore about a young socialite who vanished from her room at the hotel more than a hundred years earlier. As if the history and the mystery weren't enough, one of Andy and Mayta's dining companions, Claudia Dean, is murdered later that same evening in that very room. The narrative shifts smoothly between 1901 and the present, as the two intertwined stories play out to a satisfying conclusion. (Feb.)