“Don’t feel bad. A housewife can’t solve a murder,” he says gently. “Not even one like you.”
I really expected to like Elizabeth Arnott’s The Secret Lives of Murderers’ Wives (Berkley 2026). The premise is fantastic: three former wives of serial killers work together to catch a killer that is terrorizing California in 1966. Despite this fantastic setup, the novel falls flat. Somehow the women never seem fully fleshed, and the ending is, dare I say, disrespectful to not only the wives but the readers. Everyone deserved a bit more.
Beverley, Elsie, and Margot all had the potential to be well formed and complicated characters, but they all read as caricatures with brief glimpses of substance. There’s beautiful Beverley who has spent her entire life seeking approval of men. The studious Elsie who has also spent her life seeking approval of men and silencing her own goals – both under the thumb of her professor husband and under the eyes of the men in the newspaper room that she serves coffee. And then there’s Margot, the glitz and glam girl. Her role pretty seems solely to create tension between the women and to embrace a Hollywood angle.
There was significant potential with Beverley with the media interviews, the plea to women, and the concern her son is going to be a killer like his father. There is also potential with the secretary dreaming of being a journalist. The Hollywood mogul section is honestly a waste of words. Arnott never lets her leading ladies truly excel, and the ending is just a neat and tidy little wrap up.
Also, the sections with the woman currently being held by the serial killer are interesting, but head-scratching once this person is identified.
It’s not a bad novel. It’s a quick read that will hold your attention. I guess it’s okay for what it is.
A Girl Named Tommi 