Review: All That Is Secret

All That Is Secret: An Annalee Spain Mystery

By Patricia Raybon (Tyndale)

“The Colored Professor,” a 24-year-old Black professor at a Bible college in Chicago, is prompted by a young white boy to return home to Denver to solve the mystery of her father’s death. At too late an hour for couriers, the boy shows up at Annalee Spain’s door with a message she can’t ignore.

Someone doesn’t want her to follow the message, or maybe they do. Either way, it means trouble—for Annalee, for a young white boy, for just about everyone.

The Ku Klux Klan marches proudly through Denver in the 1920s and counts among its members nearly every prominent citizen or authority in the city. Annalee’s father was connected to some of those prominent citizens. At least one of them had national aspirations dependent upon the KKK’s blessing.

Back home in Denver, Annalee takes on the detective instincts of her favorite sleuth, Sherlock Holmes. She quickly becomes entangled with the person whose message she couldn’t refuse, opening the door to a different kind of mystery. The romance between her and Jack Blake, a pastor, threatens to distract from the detective work, pulling Annalee away at odd moments.

As a theology professor, Annalee feigns confidence in her subject—God and prayer—but she is inwardly conflicted. Her relationship with God has grown silent, but the how and the why of prayer come back to Annalee without much difficulty once she’s surrounded by a tangled web of suspects in the small world of 1920s Denver.

The narrative isn’t just fast paced; it propels the reader forward with staccato sentences, questions, single words.

Patricia Raybon is a long-established nonfiction writer, journalist and essayist published in Newsweek, USA Today and other national outlets. All That is Secret is her first novel, and it is due for release in October. She ends it with a note on the history of Denver, a city with which she is very familiar.

Eric Black, executive director/publisher/editor
Baptist Standard