The Magician's Trunk — Dan Andriacco

A MAGIC TRUNK OF TROUBLE! Perhaps by this point you already know that I have willed you all my books on magic and my magician's trunk, a kind of relic which once belonged to the Great Blackstone-Harry Blackstone, Sr. You also get the contents of the trunk. Some of those contents you can keep, some you will know how to redirect appropriately.So wrote the late Septimus Pogue to Sebastian McCabe, to whom he was a mentor in Mac's youth. The only problem is that the Blackstone trunk is missing. Thus begins the latest case for the mystery-writing professor and his best friend and brother-in-law, Thomas Jefferson Cody. Or rather, two cases-for the magician's trunk, which has a strange habit of disappearing and re-appearing again-winds up being at the center of two murders. And the second murder only occurs after the first has been solved.To get the bottom of the matter, Mac and Jeff have to sort through a collection of suspects that includes an animal channeler, an extreme saver, a bald and beautiful magician/wedding planner, a city council candidate who wants to ban electric scooters at night, a witch, and an 86-year-old former funeral home partner. And all that is before the TV show Midwest Murders comes to town-and with it a woman out of Jeff's past. This is a McCabe & Cody book unlike any other, truly a mystery in two parts.