His morality is equally as questionable as it was so long ago -- Whitehead is just as much of a robber as an industrialist as he was when he was a petty criminal in Warsaw. He is also just as arrogant, as he arranges for another criminal Marty Strauss, to act as his bodyguard, believing that human agents can protect him against the will of Mamoulian, even though Mamoulian can control the undead and control the minds of the living. Whitehead's incestuous relationship with his drug-addicted daughter Carys makes it even more difficult to the reader to sympathize with this character who seems morally unredeemable from beginning to end. The shadowy figure of Mamoulian who wishes to possess Whitehead seems less realistic and clearly defined than Whitehead the businessman, although of course he is equally morally bankrupt. Mamoulian is less a fully-developed character than a representation of evil. He clearly wishes to cash in on the debt Whitehead owes him for his soul (if Whitehead ever possessed much of a soul in the first place, that is) but his reasons for his passionate pursuit of the...

The novel is effective at the beginning, because at the onset, the reasons for the card came and the two card players' relationship is not spelled out, nor why Joseph Whitehead is so afraid when the novel shifts ahead in time. But there are also very explicit scenes of dismembering that cause the reader to feel revulsion and little else, such as when one character is flayed alive. The use of mind control, practiced by Mamoulian, and the presence of the undead are popular features in many horror books, because these plot elements touch upon almost every reader's anxieties about the ability to control one's life and what happens after death. However, much of the book is too stomach-churning to really provoke real horror on a deeper level. And the main characters are too unlikeable, and their psychologies and inner life too vaguely defined, to really make the book compelling or memorable.