Review: What The Wife Knew

As romance readers we inevitably get sad when an author jumps ship to a different sub genre or another genre entirely. What we rarely talk about is when an author jumps ship to another genre and is really, really good at it. Case in point, HelenKay Dimon, who has written romances I've enjoyed but whose work writing thrillers under the name Darby Kane are just next level. What the Wife Knew is one of those books that starts with the author mashing her foot on the accelerator and not taking the pressure off until the final page. I'd been dragging my feet on starting it, but once I did? I didn't come up for air.

Dr. Richmond Dougherty was a national hero, survivor of an unspeakable tragedy as a teenager and now a renowned, celebrated pediatric surgeon. He is also now very much dead, thanks to an "accidental fall" in his opulent home in Rye, New York. Local suspicion immediately falls on his younger, mysterious and pretty second wife, Addison. They were married less than 100 days before his death and she kicked society mainstay Wife #1, along with their two teenaged children, to the curb. The irony being that if people knew the truth about Addison she'd look more guilty, not less. What nobody knows about their marriage? It was a ruse. Richmond had secrets, the kind of dark, damaging secrets that would ruin the carefully constructed farce that was his life. Addison somehow knows all his secrets and blackmails him into a marriage in order to utterly destroy him.  Someone killing him throws a wrench in her plans and now the unimaginative police are looking her way.

This story employs one of my least favorite suspense writing tics, that of the non-linear timeline, but Kane makes it work and milks it for maximum effect. The majority of the story is told from Addison's point of view, but we do get a few chapters of Richmond which further fleshes out what a sack of human garbage he was. Kane also employs short, snappy chapters and it succeeds in keeping the reader invested and off-balance for the majority of the book. What did Addison know, when did she know it, how are all the players involved in this very messy drama connected to the final outcome of Dr. Dougherty?

Despite him being dead, Richmond's paragon of virtue reputation is still very much alive and Addison, while somewhat thrown off balance by his death, still has her mission to dismantle the whole web of lies. Leading the charge to stop her is Wife #1, Kathryn, his two surly kids, various town residents siding with the influence of Wife #1 and the partners in Richmond's medical practice. The only person who might be on her side is her husband's former lawyer, and really - can she trust him?  The gated home she shared with Richmond soon becomes a revolving door of unwanted visitors hurling accusations and then the threats start arriving - You Will Pay. Addison still has plans for Richmond, dead or not, but it certainly seems like someone else has plans for her - namely to pin a murder she didn't commit to her chest.

The whole affair thrums along at a fast clip and while the ending devolves a bit into One Shocking Reveal After Another!, did I mind?  Reader, I did not. Thrillers are called thrillers for a reason - they work for me when they're fast, furious and suck all the oxygen out of the room. Kane does that here by employing enough deadly secrets, messy family dysfunction (boy howdy!), and plenty of rich, privileged assholes getting exactly what they deserve (for a change....) to keep those pages turning. Just an all around dynamite read - start to finish.

Final Grade = A