THE SECOND HUSBAND

A woman's second marriage is thrown into question when the investigation of her first husband's murder is reopened.

Emma Hawke is happily married to Tom, a handsome widower and entrepreneur, when detectives show up at their Connecticut home to tell her they're reopening the unsolved murder investigation of her first husband, Derrick, who was killed a few months before she met Tom. As more details emerge about what might have happened to Derrick the night he was killed, the police, and even Emma, start to question Tom, who, she quickly discovers, had actually seen her from afar several times at various speaking engagements before they'd officially met. Between a possibly murderous new husband, a villainous former brother-in-law, an overeager lovesick assistant who attempts to lead Emma astray, an embezzlement scheme that begets yet another (unrelated) murder, and yet another attempted murder following that, either Emma is very unlucky or the plot is very much over-the-top. Because the characters are so flat as to feel like clip-art graphics, it's hard not to go for the second explanation. The dialogue is wooden and unnatural, as if it's being used to give readers information and not portray actual people talking. Emma is a tedious character, as is Tom, which makes the idea that he might be a murderer hard to buy. And for all the drama, the book moves slowly, with the tension only picking up in the final third. By the time the reader has learned what happened and why, it's a letdown because it's so hard to invest in any of the characters.

An intriguing premise with a few surprising twists, but it falls flat.