A comfortable quick read with familiar characters and as usual, interesting herb lore. But it's not a "murder mystery", or if it is, it's unsolved. The mystery element here is China researching old photos.. Alternating chapters in the past and future tell the story. I did enjoy both storylines even though I kept waiting for someone to die (that sounds bad, but you know what I mean). There's a theft, but it's so quickly solved it's not even a problem. Annie Laurie's tale was done well, although since this is a mystery novel, I would have liked more suspense. It could easily have been done without the ghost. Albert has incorporated ghosts or other phenomena into several of this series and while I do like supernatural mysteries, it's not what I expect here. But still, it's enjoyable and there's no need to have read the previous 25 in the series.

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