All 3 Uses

sinister
in
The Crying of Lot 49
(Edited)

When it turned out to be Pierce she'd happily pulled out the pins and curlers and down it tumbled in its whispering, dainty avalanche, only when Pierce had got maybe halfway up, her lovely hair turned, through some sinister sorcery, into a great unanchored wig, and down he fell, on his ass.
Chpt 1

sinister = evil, harmful, or frightening
So began, for Oedipa, the languid, sinister blooming of The Tristero.
Chpt 3 *
There were also the Pony Express stamp Cohen had showed her on her first visit, the Lincoln 4¢ with "U.S. Potsage," the sinister 8¢ airmail she'd seen on the tattooed sailor's letter in San Francisco.
Chpt 6

Definitions:

(1) (sinister)
evil or harmful; or making an evil or frightening impression
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
Much more rarely and only in very old usage, sinister can refer to the left side of something.