Now it is true that this is not de Lint’s first novel-based ghost story, as that honor belongs to The Blue Girl, but that was a superb Young Adult novel set firmly in Newford. Which is where she meets John Burns, just two weeks too late. A few blocks around her small apartment building is all her world - from the grocery store where she buys beans, tamales and cigarettes to the library, the little record shop, and the Solona Music Hall.
Grace works at Sanchez Motor Works, customizing hot rods. In brief, as Charles says on his Web site: Were my hopes cruelly dashed? No, not at all as it’s a cracking good outing by him! Why so? Because it’s a ghost story and it’s not set in Newford. It is worth stressing before we get into this review that my favorite Newford novel, Forests of The Heart, which I re-read every few years, is also set partly in the desert Southwest USA. Over the dozen years that followed the publication of that novel, another six novels, several novellas and myriad short stories that were also set primarily in Newford would follow, along with one work in the desert Southwest USA, Medicine Road. Newford is a setting which has, for the most part, dominated his writing since Memory & Dream, which was published in 1994. It was a typical winter afternoon as I sat down to read The Mystery of Grace - cold, wet, and a driving sleet falling hard, so it was no wonder that a good novel was in order! This is the first novel in nearly fifteen years from this writer which is not set in his city of Newford. Charles de Lint is without doubt one of the best loved writers among our reviewers here.
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