The tarot talks...but is anyone listening? In the heart of Southwest London, just a short stroll from the Thames, lies a single row of cottages. Residents may come and go, but they all have one thing in common: Tinderbox Lane - small, enclosed, unknown to any iPhone or supermarket delivery van - is the place they call home. Foremost among the residents is Dolly Greene: divorced and permanently broke, she shares...
her tiny house with her 21-year-old daughter, Pippa, who can't afford to leave. Aside from Pippa the other constant in Dolly's life is her tarot business, and when Dolly reads the cards for the magnificently voluptuous and highly sexed Nikki on a stiflingly hot summer's day, her tarot patter is interrupted by a sudden vision - a flash of Nikki's face covered in blood and bruises.
Death hangs over her, but there is an etiquette to reading tarot, and Dolly will not talk of murder to her client. A few days later, when the body of a battered woman is washed up by Chiswick Bridge, Dolly is haunted by the belief that Nikki's time may have come up...but can she be sure?
How far is Dolly prepared to go to act on her intuition? And will Sergeant Raff Williams, the officer assigned to investigate the murder, think Dolly's hunch insane?