Ali Karim was a Board Member of Bouchercon [The World Crime & Mystery Convention] and co-chaired programming for Bouchercon Raleigh, North Carolina in 2015. He is Assistant Editor of Shots eZine, British correspondent for The Rap Sheet and writes and reviews for many US magazines & Ezines.
Lawyer, academic & novelist Alafair Burke’s latest thriller is as prescient as it is page turning. It weaves an elegant narrative about what lies beneath the veneer of a marriage when the lights of the Media intrude, revealing what is hidden in the shadows within a relationship.
The Wife is the breakout thriller that Burke’s preceding work has led to, and is curiously apt in the so-called age of #MeToo.
It’s the Hamptons and Angela is catering for a dinner party, where she meets Jason, an academic from NYU. What started as a romantic interlude leads to marriage a year later.
Angela’s marriage to Jason Powell allows her (and her son Spencer) to move out of her Mother’s house (and into Greenwich Village), and to change the direction of their lives, leaving behind troubling aspects of her past.
They say the past is always with us, though we keep our secrets in the shadows away from the view of strangers. Unfortunately for Angela, some secrets are harder to conceal than others when there is public interest, from a hungry media looking for ratings and a story.
Jason is now a renowned economics Professor, has lucrative consultancy work, as well as becoming a media figure, often in the public eye. Then seriously damaging sexual misconduct allegations come out of the woodwork against Jason, so Angela is forced to stand by her husband’s side, despite the allegations becoming more disturbing.
The media attention that the Powells’ have to endure takes its toll on the couple. It’s not just the smears against Jason’s character regarding rape and sexual predation, but Angela’s past secrets (which had remained hidden in shadow), could become illuminated as the couple find themselves heading to Court, as well as being commented upon by the flat screens and newsprint that proliferate our lives and the lives of others.
Angela finds she has to prevent the truth of her teenage years from coming into the public domain. As for the allegations against her husband, and the investigation by Corrine Duncan and trial by Media?
It is of little surprise that The Wife has been bought by Amazon Studios in a major deal, and as it is Burke’s 13th published work, I’d say luck didn’t play a role; instead it was solid thriller writing that marked this novel as her breakout book.
Miss The Wife at your peril, as it is an exceptionally prescient psychological thriller - one that makes you think deeply.
