Two Dead Wives

Bestseller Parks follows up 2022’s Woman Last Seen with an intriguing, multilayered suspense tale set in London during the height of Covid-19 lockdowns. Leigh Fletcher, doting wife to Mark and mother to the couple’s two sons, has gone missing. While investigating the disappearance, Det. Insp. Clements discovers that Leigh, using the pseudonym Kai, is also married to wealthy Dutch businessman Daan Janssen. Both husbands become prime suspects in Leigh/Kai’s disappearance; though no body has been found, Clements considers that “both a problem and a tremulous, tantalizing possibility.” Meanwhile, Stacie Jones is recovering at her father’s farmhouse in rural England from a devastating illness that has left her with severe memory loss. She struggles to remember who she is and how she arrived there. The rather outlandish plot glides by as readers are drawn into the lives of Parks’s complex, finely drawn characters, whose viewpoints she smoothly shifts between while dropping subtle hints about how the two main plot threads connect. It makes for fast and enjoyable reading. (Dec.)