Skeleton

The creepy experience of reading James McBirde's The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store begins with the finding of a skeleton with unknown identity in the first paragraph. 

I can't say which have scared me more, a potential murder scene buried in an old farmer's well or the clues from a belt buckle, a pendant and a mezuza, but those the cliffhangers are enought to generate the whodunit suspense. 

There are many breakable rules in McBride's novel. One good example is weaving between a puff of smoke in a town with Black population. One new character after another visited the grocery store, most of them with own peculiar life. I got lost multiple times, much more frequent than you would have encountered in the maze of Hong Kong's Chungking Mansions.  

Near the end of novel, I have forgotten the skeleton. The way we lose the gold coins placed by McBride is as mysterious as finding the Pompeii skeleton.