The Sister’s Twin is the fourth instalment in the Detective Ray Flowers series and somewhat uniquely includes the use of tarot card reading. The prologue begins five years earlier with an unnamed man seemingly coming to his senses after a trip to a psychic fair, seeing the Book of Angels and having his fortune read. Apparently, he had received the Angel of Transformations card which is similar to the Death card in a standard tarot deck. He wasn't even one to believe much in the mumbo jumbo but something had struck him about this reader and these cards in particular. He had even decided before leaving the fair that day to purchase his own Book of Angels deck and a comprehensive guide on how to interpret them. A certainty had come to him that he should act, that those who had wronged him should be punished - by death. And that death was now, simple and clean, a knife plunged deep into the chest while the woman he had chosen to be first lay sleeping. He spread the cards across the bed, reading her past and his own future by the dim light of the risen moon, and then he chose a card for her, folded it once and slipped it into her outstretched hand. Fast forward five years and retired detective Ray Flowers is now casually working at Flowers-Mahoney Security a firm who did not take on private investigations, as a general rule. It was concerned with the installation and maintenance of security systems, and its occasional tendency to re-examine old or unusual cases that the local police had no interest in pursuing was not something the firm advertised. So it was surprising when he was paid a visit by an elderly lady called Lily Spencer, who tells him she wants him to investigate the murder of her twin sister, Rose.
Only it hasn't happened yet and has only been revealed by their friend Elspeth Moore’s reading and Lily is desperate to stop it. Back with the old man, he had now realised he was not lithe enough to continue his vengeance against those who wronged him and has taken on a protege to carry out his wishes for him. Both Lily and Rose reside at Highbury House, a retirement home for ex-performers and Lily knows that Elspeth’s track record with readings is startlingly accurate. She is having nightmares about her sister being stabbed, or strangled, or shot or mowed down and a tarot card being left as a literal calling card based on the victim’s personality; she just can't get these visualisations to cease. Flowers takes on the investigation due to the lack of police interest, but even he must admit that he doesn't believe in psychic abilities, card and palm reading or the supernatural. Despite his scepticism, as he like many others need proof in order to believe, he can't ignore Lily and her deep concern. Then the bodies of elderly woman begin to drop just as predicted, and Ray is stunned. The police take over the case from him and begin looking into who would want seemingly innocent ladies of a certain age dead, and why? This is a riveting and compelling mystery thriller crossed with a police procedural and is one of the most unique books I've read from the genre in a while. It's twisty, dramatic, incredibly tense and so refreshingly different with it involving tarot and fortune-telling. I'm a sceptic, but I must say that it added intensity and an unpredictable quality to the plot which is always a positive and made for great reading. It's a complex, enthralling and fascinating peek into another world I knew little about. Highly recommended.