Over His Dead Body
A Novel
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
In this delightfully infectious novel of love and intrigue, Leslie Glass puts a sly and sexy spin on two of life’s most devastating certainties: death and taxes.
Cassandra Sales is a woman with a gift for nurturing things—her husband, the successful wine importer; her two adult children; the fabulous flowers in her garden. After twenty-six years of marriage, however, Cassie’s husband, Mitch, is spending more time skipping abroad than remaining at home with her. Tired of being a modest Long Island housewife who can’t even remember what it’s like to be kissed, Cassie has a face-lift to recapture her youthful allure. The surprise for her husband goes awry when Mitch returns home early from a business trip. When he sees the post-op horror show, he collapses on the spot.
The resulting coma may spare Mitch from the tax audit he’s facing, but Cassie is forced to step in and research the facts of her own life. What she discovers about Mitch and the family business shocks her to the core: her “loving” husband was preparing to divorce her, swindle her out of tons of money, and run off with another woman.
As Cassie recuperates, she realizes what she’s after is revenge. Big time. But she soon learns that the road to retribution can lead to unforeseen and often deadly complications.
In Over His Dead Body, Leslie Glass blends supreme suspense and warm-hearted romantic comedy into a perfect mélange that is as inevitable as. . . death and taxes.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cassie Sales is 50, dumpy and bored, and she's the rather spiritless heroine of this new novel by Glass (Burning Time). Cassie's jet-setting international wine-dealer husband, Mitch, hasn't had sex with her in years; to reignite their failing marriage, Cassie resolves to take advantage of Mitch's business-trip absence and buy herself a face-lift. She has the surgery, but Mitch arrives home unexpectedly, takes one look at her frighteningly bruised face and collapses with a near-fatal stroke. He lies in a coma as Cassie slowly learns that he's been cheating on her for years and is about to end their marriage and leave her broke. What should be a comic romp starts off as a plod, weighed down by the musings of the earnest and pathetic Cassie. The novel picks up halfway through, when the point of view shifts to that of Mona, Mitch's manipulative 36-year-old mistress. She's a shallow but vigorous conniver whom Glass describes with obvious relish ("Mona was a very practical girl whose bible was The Art of War.... She analyzed it daily and applied the strategy of the Seven Military Classics to human relations"). Glass's portrait of Mitch, "a very dependent man parading as an independent one," is also sharp and believable. But secondary characters, such as Cassie's slapstick Aunt Edith or her bratty children, Marsha and Teddy, are less successful. There are bright spots, but readers of Glass's far better mystery series featuring NYPD detective April Woo should skip this one.
