Kirkus
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The Christmas season brings joy and murder into the lives of a close-knit family. Hana Keller works at her family’s Hungarian Tea House and helps her boyfriend, police detective Erik Wolf, solve the occasional murder. One snowy night she spots an agitated young man wearing a Riverwood University hoodie coming out of an alley, a sighting that will immerse her in a tricky case of murder. A birthday gift of dual lizard teacups she receives from her uncle is another connection to the death of college professor Sandor Balog, for Hana knew him as a fellow collector, albeit one with deeper pockets and more expensive tastes. The young man she saw was dumping the gun he’d found on the floor of Balog’s office, afraid it would implicate his mother, a fellow foreign language teacher at Riverwood. Hana’s grandmother is psychic, and Hana’s inherited some of her abilities, though she’s not confident in them. Balog enjoyed a complicated love life and had made a number of enemies in the language department, so there’s no dearth of suspects. While Erik works all the usual police angles, Hana uses her roots in the Hungarian community to talk to people about Balog. Even Christmas shopping and holiday parties at the tea house provide some clues. But it’s Hana’s special abilities that lead her to a startling conclusion. Appealing characters combine seamlessly with a twisty mystery in this pleasing tale of love and hate. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.