During an elegant dinner at the mansion, Sam is visited by a vision of a floating dead man who supplicates her with decomposing arms. The tension mounts when she is awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of footsteps in the hallway. She peers out of her bedroom doorway to find an apparition moving down the grand staircase.
The discovery of a hidden pagan altar lures Sam even deeper into the convoluted relationships in the drafty house, and into the business dealings of Henry Vandalay.
The next day, as a small circle of people gather for the reading of the will, terrible secrets are revealed. Is Sam getting too close to the killer? Will she be next? Only her steely resolve propels her to unravel the mystery hidden in the Tarot layout, and reveal the identity of the true killer.
Lead character Samantha Blackwell, however, stands alone. She is more than three-dimensional and has a lot of interesting qualities. She is intelligent, focused and projects admirable priorities. She gets a mite tedious, however, with her views involving personal choices - like eating no meat on principle; never caring about buying herself new clothes preferring instead Barnes and Noble books; having no patience with addicted smokers; sympathizing with the lowliest spiders; and "loving that man" (her husband of course).. a redundancy stated twice within only a few chapters. Lots more too but not enough space here. If the author would transfer half of the same detailed attention defining heroine Samantha to developing other characters out of one-dimensional status, the read would be much more balanced and interesting.
The story needs believablity to give it strength. Character and locale development would do it.
