As World War II draws to a close, two Bostonian cousins are parting ways: Nick marries her longtime love and war hero Hughes, while Helena marries Avery, an aspiring filmmaker in Hollywood. Yet the women remain bound together by shared memories of the family cottage in Martha's Vineyard where they spent childhood summers. As their lives begin to unravel, the Tiger House comes to represent their only place of refuge--until a brutal murder illustrates just how fragile that refuge truly is.
Tigers in Red Weather is an exercise in controlled revelation. Through Klaussmann's gradual unfolding, the reader learns the reason for Hughes's emotional withdrawal from Nick soon after they're married and the twisted contours of Helena's marriage to a man who manipulates her through pill addiction. And while Nick gives every appearance of being the perfect wife, she, too, is concealing her share of secrets.
As Nick's daughter Daisy and Helena's son Ed mature and take their places in the drama, they become caught up in the dark secrets of their parents, suffering irrevocable damage as a result. When Daisy and Ed discover the body of a murdered woman, the incident is symbolic of the inability of the adults in their lives to shield them from the ugliness that lurks beneath their mannered façade. Not even the idyllic beauty of Martha's Vineyard can protect the family from the choices that will be their undoing.
Klaussman has produced a suspenseful story that is by turns a mystery, an examination of a marriage and an exploration of the consequences of self-deception. --Ilana Teitelbaum, book reviewer at the Huffington Post