The blood in the ice cream was my first clue. Until that scene, I was blithely reading Judy MacDonald's Jane. When the blood spurts into the ice cream, I am appalled. The reader is meant to squirm.
Nothing is as it seems.
Initially , Jane's cover art did not appeal to me. After I finished the book, I looked with new eyes. I grabbed my magnifying glass to look for the spiders. There they are. For this is a novel of a spider woman who weaves fantasy stories for her twisted lover to entertain, to please, to entrap, to make him stay at home.