After her stunning debut novel, Turn of Mind, Alice LaPlante is back with A Circle of Wives, an engrossing psychological thriller where almost nothing is as it seems.
Dr. John Taylor, a well-known reconstructive surgeon, is found dead in a hotel room--in his hometown. Whip-smart detective Samantha Adams is assigned to the case. At first, it seems straightforward--an overweight, middle-aged man who worked too hard had a heart attack--but the autopsy reveals John died from an injection of potassium chloride. For a detective accustomed to investigating bicycle thefts, this is a major change.
There's no shortage of suspects. John's three wives--concurrent, not sequential--were all neatly located in different cities, instructed as to when and where they might call him, under the careful orchestration of Wife #1, Deborah. She long ago discovered his dalliance with a nurse, confronted him and scared her off. They worked out a deal. "He could seek true love," Deborah explains. "He could even get married again, if he found someone who loved him back. But she was not to know about me." His first conquest (and second wife) was MJ, a hippie gardener. After six years, John wandered again and married Helen, a pediatric oncologist. Six months later, he was murdered.
Told in the alternating voices of Samantha and the three wives, the labyrinthine path to murder, the intricate relationships, and Samantha's own romantic tribulations all play out in an exploration of the nature of love, marriage, trust and expectation. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.