Three Single Wives

Related Categories: The Crime Vault Friday Reads, The Crime Vault Homepage posts, The Crime Vault Posts
Related Tags:

If you belong to a book club, you’ll know the conversation rarely sticks to the book, especially when there’s wine involved. So when the women of this particular book club make a passing joke about how they might do the deed if their husbands ever drove them to murder, the discussion is soon forgotten. Until that is, a man is found dead the very next day, killed in exactly the manner they jokingly suggested the day before. Now it’s very far from a laughing matter and Penny, Anne, and Eliza find themselves at the centre of a murder investigation.

There are many reasons why Three Single Wives is the perfect thriller for a cold January afternoon, especially one in lockdown. Firstly, it’s one of those books that has you in its clutches from the very first page. It begins right at the heart of the action, and from there the mystery is unravelled swiftly but masterfully, so that you find yourself tearing through chapters to get your next nugget of information. Secondly, the characters are all so vibrant and convincing that it’s easy to get completely lost in their company. You don’t always sympathise with Penny, Anne and Eliza – they’re all suspects after all – but you’re always keen to spend another half an hour with them, and before you know it an afternoon has sailed by. And finally, like Gina LaManna’s first thriller – Pretty Guilty Women – Three Single Wives revels in its glorious Californian setting. You might not be able to get on a plane to LA right now, but this might just be the next best thing.

Rosanna Forte