My Husband's Killer: The emotional, twisty new mystery from the #1 bestselling author of Friend Request

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Have you seen the boys?’ I ask, aware that they’ve slipped from the orbit I’ve held them in so carefully all day. There are lots of novels around at the moment that centre around friends who go on holiday together, I really enjoy them and this one is one of the best that I've read in a long while. Despite the fairly large cast of characters, which does take some sorting out at the beginning, it's a novel filled with suspense, intrigue and mystery. I further plead that my husband be made responsible for our children’s feeding, education and medical care. The police suspect Leah of wrongdoing and arrest her for felony theft and child neglect. She begs Adam to stand up for her, but he doesn’t know what to believe. The police show Leah a picture of Valerie, and it isn’t the woman Leah hired. All Leah has is a disconnected phone number and a blurry picture as evidence.

A silence descends in which they regard me anxiously. They’ll put it down to grief, but I know I’m being short with them and until this morning I would have said they don’t deserve it. Along with Poppy, these women dropped everything to support me today, and over these last terrible three months. They came to the registrar with me when, having finally received confirmation of presumption of death, I went to register Andrew’s death, unable to deal with it alone. They sat with me at the meeting with the vicar, helping me plan the service, knowing what I wanted without having to ask. They set up the projector for the montage of photos of Andrew I spent hours putting together as I wept uncontrollably at his innocent childhood face. But one of them has ruined everything. We meet Liz, whose husband, Andrew, has recently been killed in a tragic accident, while they were on holiday in Italy with friends. But Liz is left even more bereft, when she finds evidence that her husband may have been having an affair on the day of his funeral. It puts Liz in an impossible situation. How can she mourn Andrew now, when all she can think of is the idea of Andrew cheating on her? Will she ever find out what was going on now that he’s dead? As Poppy passes Trina and Saffie, she gives them an almost imperceptible signal that indicates I’ve been left alone. As one, they descend on me like well-schooled dancers in a ballet, getting every step right. Saffie is as glamorous and elegant as ever. Her dark blond hair falls in neat waves over the shoulders of the unfeasibly expensive navy Leah is VERY trusting and leaves for a work trip immediately. She doesn’t even fill out any paperwork and pays Valerie in cash. Leah takes a picture of Valerie and Emma before she gets in her cab, but Valerie intentionally moves, blurring herself in the picture. OH ALSO, LEAH FORGOT HER DAUGHTERS BIRTHDAY. This book felt like friendship school drama poured and moulded into the real life drama mixed with friend holiday drama. This lowkey feels like the typical holiday drama meets death kinda book.This book although compelling, for me the characters were all unlikeable. They all fly off to the Amalfie coast to stay with Staffie and Todd. Thanks.’ I’m aware I sound stilted but I hope she’ll put it down to grief. ‘Who are those lot, do you know?’ I indicate a small group of men in mostly ill-fitting suits chatting quietly amongst themselves. The Landell Trust, a charity which supports Liz through the whole missing-husband trauma, sounded like a real thing and I was a bit surprised that - at least according to Google - it doesn't actually exist. There are a lot of novels of this type at the moment but I think Laura Marshall really pulls it off in this entertaining psychological thriller. Seven of us arrived at a villa on the Amalfi Coast, ready to enjoy a sun-soaked weekend with our oldest friends - and one new face. By the end of the weekend, a terrible accident will leave my husband dead, But how can I mourn him, when on the day of his funeral I discover he was having an affair? The only suspects are the women I went on holiday with. My oldest and closest friends.

Leah finds the fake Valerie at a work event with Adam. The wig and glasses are gone, and her name is Cathy. Cathy is a dental hygenist who is DATING Adam. Leah punches Cathy in the face, assaults a police officer, and runs off like a total badass. Leah calls her lawyer, who tells her that an arrest warrant is out for Leah. The boys and I are the first to leave with Andrew’s parents following behind, his mother wailing and clinging to her husband who has aged ten years in the last three months. Mourners – family, friends, colleagues, red-eyed but offering supportive smiles - reach out from the end of almost every row. There are three serious men and a woman who I think are work associates. A dark-haired young woman I don’t recognise sits in the final row, stifling tears, rummaging in her bag for a tissue.They’re the GreenEc lot,’ Poppy says. ‘God, I suppose I ought to go and schmooze them – sorry not schmooze … I didn’t mean to make this sound like some sort of grim networking event.’ The premise is that she leaves her kid for three days with a nanny. Only the nanny is (insert title here) and from that point onwards nobody cares about the plot device, it's just the world against Karen and she must fight them all to prove how amazing she is. So what if she physically assaults random people and a cop, so what if she breaks in to another person's house.

After going through some Chinese dark web internet technology they are able to not just identify the crazy girlfriend but also CALL and get info from her psychiatrist? And he talks to this stranger about.a patient? Hmm. I would have told the psych to immediately call the local authorities to tell them about the killer's real identity. Problem solved. But no.... Alright, darling?’ Saffie presses her cheek to mine and I breathe in a waft of her perfume, heady with jasmine. Trina gives me a brief hug, all angles and bones – she’s definitely lost weight.The detective interviews Cathy and Adam. She takes a particular interest in Cathy and asks about her past. Adam notices some discrepancies in what she tells the police and what she has told him previously. Like how she was a foster kid. Cathy downplays her lies and cries when Adam confronts her. They have more sex, and Cathy asks to adopt Emma and get married. When Adam hesitates, Cathy pops off and angrily storms off. Mom does her Richard Kimble thing and somehow moves all around the town after assaulting a cop AND at gunpoint takes another one hostage. Hmm, an APB would have been handy here dontcha think? My butt would have been discovered and arrested within a few hours in real life. But nope, the mom is able to just break in to anyone's house, threaten people, assault whoever, and still remain at large. Unrealistic. I mean … to the extent that we know anybody. There’s always a part of everyone that’s hidden, that they keep for themselves, I think. Don’t you?’

The air in the churchyard is humid and oppressive, the sky a peculiar dark grey tinged with orange. Water droplets cling to the leaves in the trees, occasionally giving up and splashing to the ground. His mother wanted him to be buried here, but the Tyrrhenian sea has so far refused to give him up. Behind me, she begins to cry, her raw unfettered pain echoing around the churchyard. I am dry-eyed, consumed with jealousy at her straightforward misery. My friends Poppy, Saffie and Trina form a phalanx of support around me, a guard of honour as we walk to the car.The set-up to this book was very engaging. I wanted to know what was going on in Andrew and Liz’s lives before Andrew’s death. As Laura Marshall begins to reveal what happened, she introduces the rest of her cast, Liz and Andrew’s friends, who were on holiday with them in Italy. There was no one in the group who I particularly warmed to, as I was reading this book. They were all fleshed out well and there were some intense scenes between them, making this book really engaging. I wanted to know more about what was going on in their private lives, and if there was any more to Andrew’s death than what first meets the eye. Liz and Andrew were a great match, and I watched as first love, and then fatherhood, transformed him.’ I loved the setting of the Amalfi Coast. Laura Marshall captures the beauty of the setting well, but she also creates a sense of menace. I got the feeling that there was something more going on here behind the scenes, especially as Laura Marshall reveals her character’s true colours. And there are some nasty character’s in this book. We finish with a hymn to which I hardly bother to mouth along having let the vicar choose it, and a final prayer committing Andrew’s body, wherever it may be, to a God he had little belief in. Originally I had mooted a non-religious ceremony but Andrew’s parents had objected, and as I didn’t have any strong feelings either way a church service seemed the right thing to do.