Someone Else's Husband
A Novel
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
USA TODAY BESTSELLER • New York Times bestselling author Kimberly McCreight delivers a tour de force of character-driven suspense: the story of two women whose secrets and desires entrap them in a deadly love triangle.
“McCreight’s new stunner Someone Else’s Husband takes readers from the peaks of Mt. Kilimanjaro to the streets of Soho and finally to the most mysterious place of all—the human heart. I was seduced by each character and knocked sideways by each betrayal. McCreight’s talent is boundless.” —Amity Gaige, author of Heartwood
Gretchen Falk, a Park Avenue sophisticate born into great wealth and blessed with a storybook marriage, knows she lives a charmed life, and she’s not about to risk losing any part of it. That’s why she tried to convince Richard, her devoted husband and the father to their three children, not to join his old college friends on an expedition to the imposing peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. Little did she know that the beautiful artist climbing alongside him might prove the far greater danger.
Frankie Callahan’s dream of artistic success is within reach, with her career-making exhibition at a celebrated New York gallery only weeks away. If all goes well, the show will leave her financially independent, free of the tainted money that ties her to a past—and a man—she’s desperate to escape. To mark this new beginning, she is going to climb Kilimanjaro. But when she learns she’s the sole female accompanying a group of male friends, Frankie realizes that nothing about the trip will be as she expected. She certainly hasn’t counted on meeting anyone like the very charismatic, very rich, very married Richard Falk. By the time they descend—with one fewer in their group than when they began—they have lost more than they ever could have imagined.
Now, less than two weeks after their return to New York, Frankie’s East Village loft is a blood-soaked crime scene, and Richard has been charged with her murder. It falls to Gretchen to figure how the life she so carefully constructed could have imploded so completely. There are only two things she knows for sure: she’s the only woman Richard has ever loved, and he would never hurt anyone.
Someone Else’s Husband is the sweeping and suspenseful story of two women on a collision course with love—and with each other—in which no one is right and everyone is very, very wrong.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Murder changes everything one woman knows about her marriage and her life in this taut, unpredictable thriller. Born into wealth and power, Gretchen loves and trusts her successful, self-made husband, Richard, so when he wants to join some buddies on an adventure to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, she grudgingly approves. But a member of the climbing party dies along the way, and not long after he returns, Richard is arrested as a suspect in the murder of Frankie, an aspiring artist who also took part in the climb. What did Richard do, what did Frankie know, and how far will Gretchen go to protect her life of luxury? Shifting perspectives and adding new twists at a heady pace, Kimberly McCreight fashions a crime thriller that turns wealth, class, privilege, and sex into a deliciously volatile mix.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Investment banker Richard Falk and his wife, Gretchen, are sound asleep in their swanky Upper East Side co-op when police arrive with a warrant in this entertaining mystery from bestseller McCreight (Like Mother, Like Daughter). Frankie Callahan, an artist whom Richard and his college friends met on a trip to Mount Kilimanjaro weeks earlier, has been stabbed to death in her East Village apartment—and Richard is under arrest for killing her. Desperate to keep up appearances and certain that her doting husband isn't capable of murder, Gretchen assures the couple's three grown children the arrest is a mistake. As Gretchen tries to figure out the nature of Richard and Frankie's relationship, McCreight shuffles in vivid first-person chapters from Frankie's perspective that cover both the dangerous mountain trek where she met Richard and the days before her death, during which she becomes increasingly agitated about a well-connected ex-boyfriend she believes is stalking her. Though savvy mystery readers might identify Frankie's killer early on, McCreight delivers plenty of surprising secondary twists. Dynamic characters and expert pacing further bolster the proceedings. This should satisfy the author's fans and win her new ones.
