She’s baaaaack. 

For her seventeenth birthday, crack high school journalist/sleuth Adriana Hofstetter is taken to the Magic Castle, a mansion of magic, where she, BFF Billy, and mom Margaret delight in the feats of prestidigitation, from amazing card tricks, to solid rings that magically connect and disconnect seemingly at will, to birds that appear out of nowhere.  It’s a world that’s baffling and bewildering, and which people of all ages flock to be fooled and confounded by mysterious illusions.   And she thinks it would make a great story for her high school newspaper.

But the story takes a different turn when one of the magicians turns up dead, she’s convinced all is not what it seems and, being the dogged and hard-headed person she is, she becomes determined to find out everything she can in this world of smoke and mirrors.

Along the way, she has some adventures with her mother and Billy, she visits Detectives Ramirez and Coyne, as well as her elderly friend, producer Patrick Bronstein.  And thanks to Billy, she becomes an occasional blogger, letting the blogosphere know of her exploits.  But who is it that begins leaving threatening comments and warnings on her blog? 

Like the other books in the Adriana Hofstetter series, Murder at the Magic Castle is a fun, suspenseful, and sometimes dangerous ride with a young woman who will stop at nothing to get to the truth.

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Not to disparage Hollywood High, the Masquers Club,
the Historical Society and other Los Angeles venues
where high school sleuth Adriana Hofstetter has
tracked and tricked murderers in this delightful series,
Kimmel’s latest crime scene is surely his most inspired.
The Magic Castle! The charming, ever-curious Adriana
takes us on a tour through this intriguing palace of
smoke and mirrors, introduces us to masters of magic
and misdirection and solves the murder of a well-liked
but strangely solitary card trick specialist. All great fun,
including a walking visit to locations used in the noir
film classic Double Indemnity.

—Dick Lochte, author of the Nero Award-winning
Sleeping Dog.



Copies ordered through this site will be signed by the author and include some fun extras.