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Julia Bonatti's life is going fairly well. She has managed to score an amazing (and affordable) apartment (with a garage!) in San Francisco. She's started her own business and has finessed that into a newspaper column - both astrological in nature. She is slowly recovering from the death of her fiancé, and getting on with her life. Then she does something she doesn't like to do: a reading in a client's home. The new client is an elderly aunt of another client, and unable to handle the stairs or steep hills required for the normal sites where Julia does her readings.
Without going into too much detail, elderly aunt Evandra is convinced that niece Dorothy is trying to kill her. Dorothy is trying to wean herself away from her domineering husband Robert and is living with her aunts during that process, and also doing some care-giving while Evandra recovers from a hip fracture. Aunt Eunice has fallen under the spell of an evangelical preacher from Louisiana, the Reverend Roy of the Prophet's Tabernacle. Julia wakes up one morning to find herself the target of the Reverend Roy's followers; they are picketing outside her apartment. They also target the shop where she gives readings; the shop is owned by a good friend, who is definitely not amused by the Reverend Roy and his cohorts. Arson doesn't improve her mood.
Julia does Evandra's chart, which enables Julia to reassure Evandra about some things but doesn't make Julia very happy with the very near future. Thanks to the miracle of computers, she can look at the intersections and/or overlaps between Evandra's chart and Dorothy's, which doesn't reassure Julia at all. Throw in Robert's chart, and all hell breaks loose. Luis, Evandra's gardener, falls over a cliff while Julia is there. Accident? Looks that way, but Julia is unconvinced.
This all takes place during the Christmas season, a holiday Julia isn't sure she celebrates but buys presents for her friends anyway. In the middle of all this hullabaloo, a man shows up claiming to be the long lost Australian relative (doesn't every family have one?), who just might have a claim on the estate, whenever the aunts die. Dorothy is beside herself, Aunt Evelyn is abducted by Reverend Roy, and Julia tries to stay calm and focused. Robert decorates a Christmas tree.
This is an enjoyable read. The characters are believable, especially given the setting. The sub-plots are germane, and things are ultimately connected by the end of the novel. There are enough loose ends for Di Marco to pull on in her second book, whenever that arrives. The mandatory cat, Wizard, has no speaking role but provides support and warmth when necessary. The zodiac - therein lies, at least for me, the problem. I know very little about it, other than that I am a Taurus which complicated my relationship(s) with my Dad, who was a Leo (according to my step-mom). So any time Julia started looking at charts, and Mercury ascending, and things like that . . .I was lost. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, just a warning that detailed explanations are not forthcoming, so just take it on faith when Julia bases an action on something in a chart. There are other, less arcane, explanations for everyone's behaviors; Julia views them through her own special window. It works for her, and for this novel.
§ I have been reading and reviewing mystery fiction for over a quarter of a century and read broadly within just about all genres and sub-genres. I have been a preliminary judge for the Malice Domestic/St. Martin’s Press Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Contest for at least 25 years. I live in Northern lower Michigan with my spousal unit, one large cat, and 2 fairly small dogs. My Sherlockian (BSI) nom-de-plume is VR; my license plate is BSI VR
Reviewed by PJ Coldren, June 2016
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