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Stealing the Elf-King's Roses is as much a mystery novel as it is science fiction.

Sure, the story involves alternate universes, takes for granted technologies we won't see for generations yet, and stars a crime-fighting team composed of a Sighted woman and a wolfhound-like alien. But it's still a first-rate murder mystery.

It's also the best kind of science fiction. Take away the sci-fi and you wouldn't have the story; but the story is not "about" the sci-fi. It's about people. After an elf is murdered in a seedy part of Ellay City, Lanthanomancer Lee Enfield and her partner Gelert begin what should be a routine investigation with a sudden sense that something isn't right. Their employer is too eager. Their allies are too nervous. And their lives are suddenly in too much danger.

If I sound like a jacket blurb, it's only because this was one of the more interesting novels I've read lately. I was familiar with Diane Duane's Young Wizards novels -- an engaging young adult series the publisher began to promote again in hopes of riding Harry Potter's broomtails -- and expected the Elf-King's Roses to be similar: pleasant, enjoyable, and fast. Instead I found a grown-up, satisfyingly convoluted mystery set in a futuristic but not impossible world.

That world is one of Duane's triumphs with this book. She never explains the technology or the magic; she doesn't lapse into narrative exposition and her characters don't find excuses to tell each other how things work. Yet it all makes sense, and you know from the first page you're in an alternate -- but very real -- world.

Everyone takes the daily miracles for granted, just like we do. Flip a switch, a light comes on. Press a button, the TV across the room changes channels. Slip a tiny plastic disk onto your eyeball, and myopia surrenders to clarity. Twitch certain jaw muscles, and your implant records everything you see and feel until you switch it off again.

Racing along with the mystery, it begins to dawn on you that there's more to this volume than a murder wrapped in a worldgate wrapped in a creation story. Each of the universes do reflect the Earth we know and should love -- that's what parallel dimensions do. But seen through Lee's and her companions' eyes during a brief visit to our own Earth, something more profound than entertainment emerges. There's a message here, if we want to hear it.

Freelance writer Regina Lynn Preciado lives in her truck but maintains a household in Los Angeles. Find out what else she's reading in her book blog.