Three Single Wives

LaManna’s second novel (after Pretty Guilty Women) opens with a book club meeting like no other. Eliza Tate is the host, Anne Wilkes and Penny Sands the guests, but things take a turn for the dark when the discussion moves to cheating husbands and the best way to get away with murder. Anne knows her detective husband is having an affair, but with four young children at home, she might be willing to put up with it. Eliza is aware her husband is cheating, too. Penny has moved to Hollywood in search of a film career and is taking acting classes from Eliza’s husband. When one of their husbands is murdered, the wife is the prime suspect. But all three women are under suspicion as the dead man had been very busy, sleeping with one of the women and blackmailing the other. Told in chronological order and interspersed with trial transcripts, this is a fast-paced and entertaining read, with an unexpected twist at the end.