Of the Blue Rose Trilogy, which also includes Straub's KOKO and THE THROAT, this was the least intense, though it certainly boasts the most intriguing plot. The three novels in this series are almost experimental in nature, resembling an artist's notepad in which ideas for short stories are introduced, discarded, and then reworked later on. The common threads running through the stories are the Blue Rose murders, Millhaven and Tim Underhill, though the latter two are disguised here. MYSTERY can be read all by itself and appreciated, but it should be supplemented with KOKO and, at least, THE THROAT. Reading all three in order of publication, one gets the feeling of reading the same story told from different points of view, like the Gospels so often alluded to in THE THROAT.