THE QUESTION OF THE UNFAMILIAR HUSBAND

A professional fact-finder finds himself stymied by a client who's married to someone she doesn’t know.

In the six months since he opened Questions Answered in a strip mall in Piscataway, New Jersey, Samuel Hoenig has tackled an odd assortment of queries, including Garden State Cryonics’ bizarre quest for body parts gone astray (The Question of the Missing Head, 2014). But Sheila McInerney brings him a question as odd as it is unwelcome: she asks, “Who is the man in my bed who calls himself my husband?” Sheila has reason to wonder. She went to a costume party hosted by a co-worker and met a man dressed as Zorro. Two glasses of wine later, she woke up next to Oliver Lewis, who claimed they were so smitten they had eloped to Darien, Connecticut, to tie the knot, producing a marriage certificate to back up his story. Samuel, whose Asperger’s syndrome makes thoughts of physical intimacy puzzling and slightly distasteful, nevertheless feels that as proprietor of a growing business, he can ill afford to turn away prospective clients. Still, he feels inadequate to tackle Sheila’s inquiry on his own, so he calls Janet Washburn, a former client who assisted with the Garden State case, to help him navigate a world of social nuance he cannot completely understand. Over her husband’s objections, she agrees. But when Ollie Lewis’ body turns up in the Questions Answered office and Sheila McInerney drops out of sight, it seems as if Ms. Washburn’s all-too-familiar husband may have the right idea about what’s a safe occupation for his wife.

Just as Samuel grows Questions Answered, Copperman (who as Cohen writes nonfiction books about Asperger's) continues to grow Samuel, making him just as quirky but more appealing than in his debut.