Grand Master of crime fiction Dorothy Salisbury Davis introduces one of her most winning heroines, Julie Hayes, a former actress turned fortune-teller who abruptly learns there is murder in her future.

Twenty-five-year-old Julie Hayes is feeling overshadowed by her globe-trotting journalist husband and looking for some excitement and direction in life. On what amounts to a dare, she sets herself up as "Friend Julie", a storefront fortune-teller in Manhattan's seedy Theater District. Now Julie finds herself concerned with the lives of the neighborhood eccentrics, old friends from the Actors Forum, and street characters such as Goldie the pimp, a wealthy gangster, and a young prostitute who wants Julie to help her escape The Life. But a man is found murdered in the girl's room - a man Julie can identify for the police. Thrust into the investigation of the man's death, Julie discovers a new direction for her life, but her tarot cards reveal a future she might not live to see.

A Death in the Life is the first novel in Dorothy Salisbury Davis' Julie Hayes mystery series, which also includes Scarlet Night, Lullaby of Murder, and The Habit of Fear, as well as the stories "The Puppet" and "Justina" in the collection In the Still of the Night.