What The Wife Knew

In Darby Kane’s newest novel, What the Wife Knew — just like in her previous novel Pretty Little Wife — Kane gives us a cold female protagonist and a husband with extremely dark secrets.  The author plays with making the female protagonist unlikable, refusing to explain herself or ally with any of the people around her.

Rich doctor Richmond Dougherty, has abruptly ditched his high school sweetheart wife for the young, beautiful Addison, and then died by misadventure about 3 months into their marriage. Of course, Addison is immediately under suspicion. The flaw in the obvious evil-golddigger narrative is that Addison has barely touched the money she’s inherited. And although she doesn’t want the first Mrs. Dougherty to get a penny more than the initial divorce settlement, Addison’s been pretty quick to pay tuition for Richmond’s children.

Just like in Pretty Little Wife, there are a few references to the wife’s dark past and hints that she could say way more if she felt like it. But Addison doesn’t feel like it, responding with sarcastic quips whenever anyone wants to know about her new husband, his series of accidents before this accidental death, why she keeps a bat next to her (separate) bed, or where that bat could have gone. Addison definitely has a dark secret, but since she doesn’t want to dwell on it, it doesn’t feel like the Unspeakable Secret plot device.

I actually didn’t find Addison unlikable, it seemed more like marrying Richard was her terrible minimum-wage job and she was just trying to get through it as fast as possible. Lila, in Pretty Little Wife, has an annoying streak, which helped her seem unpleasant and suspicious to me, not just to the other characters in the book. But Addison just seemed like she wanted to go home.

Richmond, the husband, is well-known and well-loved. He was a teenage hero and is now a popular and successful pediatric surgeon. Even if we thriller readers know Darby Kane is setting it all up drop a huge reveal on us, he seems like a real hometown hero. Ok, look, I don’t want to spoil the reveal, but a few times, I saw part of Richmond’s hidden secrets could be, and then it went even darker than I could have guessed. 

I can’t really discuss What The Wife Knew in a lot of detail without revealing more of the plot, and this is the kind of book where you really don’t want spoilers, the kind where you want to put the clues together for yourself. Psychological thrillers work well when they build suspense and tension, which — for me — has to hinge on curiosity and caring about the characters. Addison’s not instantly likable, but the curiosity about her strange “marriage” and all of Richmond’s “accidents” pulled me in. Besides, I kind of knew the author would play with a heroine who’s not particularly relatable. This pulled me into the unpredictable plot.

Complex characters like these can power good psychological thrillers, too. Here, we had a lot of complicated relationships, particularly between mothers and their children, almost like in a family saga.  Unraveling characters’ motivations and backstories always adds to a thriller, and once again, Kane gives us readers clear hints to let us predict and see some of it coming… and then the book went way darker than I could have guessed. 

Overall, this is a twisty, dark thriller without gore. It’s still a murder mystery, so there’s some blood, but the main focus is on the twisted motivations and on the layers of lies covering lies in this book.