Deception: A Novel - Softcover

Mina, Denise

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316058572 ISBN 13: 9780316058575

Publisher: Back Bay Books, 2005

Synopsis

Things like this don't happen to people like us. That's what Lachlan Harriot thinks as he watches his wife, Susie, led to jail in handcuffs. Yes, Susie, a psychologist, was found covered in blood near the spot where one of her clients appears to have been murdered. But Susie is not a killer, Lachlan thinks. She's my wife. She's our child's mother. Secrets lurk behind closed doors, however, a dark truth made chillingly clear as Lachlan's efforts to prove Susie's innocence uncover an entire secret history--illicit affairs, false identities, unimaginable deception--and this brilliantly acclaimed, page-turning novel speeds toward a conclusion as shocking as it is ingenious.

About this title

From AudioFile

Lochlan Harriot is stunned when his beloved wife is convicted of murder, and he launches a desperate search to find evidence of her innocence. Susie Harriot had been a court-appointed psychologist for a serial killer before he was found dead. As Lochlan gradually comprehends the complexity of his wife's connection with the murdered criminal, he begins to question his own relationship with Susie. Narrator Richard Matthews provides rich personalities for this provocative, dark mystery. Through Matthews's capable voice, we experience Lochlan as pitiful and deplorable, yet somehow compelling. Women's voices are also presented plausibly, and the Scottish and British accents add credibility. N.M.C. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Publishers Weekly

When psychiatrist Susie Harriott is convicted of murdering Glasgow serial killer Andrew Gow, her husband, Lachlan, embarks on a frantic search for material that may help with her appeal. But in going through her files, he finds layer upon layer of nasty secrets... or does he? Lachlan's diaries tell the dark and complicated story, claiming, variously, both absolute fact and deliberate fantasy. In medical school when he met Susie, Lachlan gave up his day job to be a house husband and dream of being a writer after the birth of their daughter, Margie, now a toddler. Deception (and self-deception) abounds, including the inevitable dalliance between Lachie and the au pair, Yeni, who shares her employer's primal hunger for sticky childhood candies. But it's voice, not event, that grabs hold of the reader and won't let go. Lachlan Harriott immerses us in his obsessions; like Nabokov's Humbert Humbert, he repels and commands sympathy in the same instant. He is a charming, comic, intelligent narrator—and a man who might happily see his wife rot in prison, not for murder, but for the greater sin of rejecting him. Susie herself is seen as if through a long lens that can barely contain her beautiful, sorrowful image; what she did or didn't do is less compelling than what her husband reveals (or invents) about himself in his new life after her conviction. Mystery lovers have lately been looking to Scotland, in part because of Mina's fast-growing reputation; this stunning new work can only bolster the trend.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0316058572
• ISBN 13: 9780316058575
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 311