“Bevan is doing with the tarot what
Sue Grafton did with the alphabet.”

As a kindness to my mother, Barbara, who had been a long-time and well-loved member of the Junior League of Monterey, California, her Junior League Book Club elected to read “The Fool Card” for its June book. They invited me to join them for a luncheon at a gorgeous chateau-like home on the ocean in Pebble Beach. I drove down with my friends Laurie and Tracy, who went off to their own lovely lunch in Carmel while the book club members first served a delicious meal and then thanked me for being their first author to attend one of their meetings. The privilege was mine entirely; they all brought their copies of “The Fool Card,” with bookmarks flagging places in the story that raised questions for them. I mean, they did homework!

They asked question after question and listened with wonderful courtesy and patience. They wanted to know how my mother’s daughter came to be a tarot reader (since that seemed unlikely to anyone who knew Barbara), how I came up with the idea for The Tarot Mysteries, what my writing process (such as it is) consisted of, and, a classic question for all fiction writers, “Where do your ideas come from?”

They could not have been more cordial, or more complimentary, and since “The Fool Card” was their last book before the Club’s summer break, they were very happy that “the book is such a fast read.”

The desserts were chocolate, so I believe we can all agree that they treated me as I would wish to be treated.

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