Book Review: Keeper of the Keys, by Perri O'Shaughnessy

Perri O'Shaughnessy fans should know right off the bat that this is not part of the best-selling Nina Reilly series. Keeper of the Keys is good, but very different.

Ray Jackson's wife, Leigh, has disappeared. Ray seems to be a little Scott Peterson-esque in his reaction to this. He does not seem to be that concerned about it. I will say that he doesn't talk about her in the past tense, though. Also, Leigh had been the one having the affair (with Ray's business partner), not Ray.

Ray is troubled, however. He is haunted by a past in which he and his mother, a single parent, moved around a lot. His father had supposedly died when Ray was two. Ray has become obsessed with the houses in which they lived. He still has a key for each house. A gifted architect, he had spent the last several months before Leigh's disappearance building models of all the houses in which they had lived while he was growing up. His obsession was driving Leigh nuts (maybe that's why she didn't want to stick around).

After Leigh disappears, you'd think he would look for her, but instead Ray begins visiting all his old houses and seeing if his old keys still work. His mother had a hiding place in each of those houses, and in each hiding place, Ray finds clues regarding his past. His mom is not exactly forthcoming when he confronts her about it.

Besides incurring the suspicion of Leigh's parents, an old friend of Leigh's named Kat shows up on Ray's doorstep, wanting to know where she is. Kat and Leigh had a falling out years ago, but Kat had been persuaded by her sister to try to reestablish contact with Leigh at about the same time Leigh disappeared.

Both Ray and Leigh had troubled pasts, though in very different ways. It's fascinating to see how their pasts come back to haunt them. There were quite a few twists and turns that I didn't expect. It did take me awhile to warm up to the characters, though. All in all I really enjoyed the book, but I hope the O'Shaughnessy sisters (Perri O'Shaughnessy is the pen name for sisters Mary and Pamela O'Shaughnessy) have not abandoned the Nina Reilly series.

Keeper of the Keys is now out in paperback. It was published in hardback in 2006 by Bantam Dell, a Division of Random House, Inc.