The Tower Card Murder by Mika Kosey

True Psychic Connects with True Skeptic

Dee is a young woman with real psychic abilities. She sees auras, can hear dead people, and has a true intuitive sense of how to use the tarot cards. When we meet her, she’s waking up from a dream that she’s had the past couple of nights where she’s at an ancient feast with five men, and she is being asked to choose. Upon awakening, though she needs to go to her work as a tarot reader at a local store, she quickly does her own tarot card of the day and comes up with The Tower, reversed. She’s a bit startled by this as well as the intense energy that seems to be around it. On the way to the store, she hears her dead father telling her to get out, and she sees a creepy guy watching her. At the store, Dr. Shayne Hollande comes in and asks for a reading. He’s an academic who wants to discover for himself if psychics are fake. When she starts his reading, cards come up that suggests her and the doctor’s connection, and this is quickly followed by a repeat of the reversed Tower card. She has a minor flip-out moment and promptly leaves.

What is the connection between Dee and Dr. Shayne? What change or destruction will play out in her life as suggested by the tower card? What of her dream about the five then?

My only complaint about the book is that the author uses a fair amount of profanity that added nothing to the plot or characterization. I don’t mind a little contextual profanity, but if it just seems to be thrown in, it detracts from a story for me.

I enjoy the tarot myself, so I appreciated how well this author integrated the use of the tarot into the book. Tarot is often used in fantasy novels, but I’ve rarely seen it so intricately woven into the fabric of a story as it is in this one. While I don’t always agree with the author’s interpretation of the cards, I understand that such is necessary for this particular plot. I think, too, that the author did an excellent job showing how someone with psychic abilities uses and things about them. As the narrator, Dee expresses the things that she sees and hears outside of the usual five senses as easily as if she were describing the standard ways of perception, which of course for Dee, these are an everyday happenstance. I love reading about how she could sense auras and energy in such a natural and organic way.