Context is everything in this fine first novel. The Cloisters is a gothic museum of medieval, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Researchers search for 15th century tarot cards used for divination – telling the future had been the original purpose of these cards. There is a murder, of course, and academic obsession. What is fate and what is choice? Sinister secrets abound and the ending is especially seductive.
What David Read 