I expected "Out of Africa" with a bit of mystery thrown in but I was surprised. I appreciated the period setting. I genuinely felt like I was a British ex-partiot after WWI, although the characters, including the heroine, are somewhat broadly drawn. The supernatural touches of the shape-shifters are what surprised me. I like mysteries with a touch of SF but it seemed out of place here. But most of all, the actual solving of the mystery was not that difficult - I knew half the answer a third of the way into the book. And I rarely guess "whodunnit".