DECEPTION

“Nothing bad ever happens to young professionals like us,” a Glasgow psychiatrist tells her husband shortly before she’s convicted of murder.

The man Susie Harriot is accused of killing is Andrew Gow, the self-confessed Riverside Ripper whose conviction was overturned after two additional female victims turned up while he was serving a life sentence. The prosecution argued that Susie, who’d been seeing Gow while he was imprisoned and was found near his mutilated body spattered with his blood, was furious at Gow and jealous of his new wife, Donna McGovern, who’d written him a series of infatuated letters while he was still in prison. Now that Donna has disappeared and Susie’s suspected of doing away with her as well, her husband Lachlan, a physician turned stay-at-home dad, is frantic to uncover evidence that exculpates Susie. But when he begins to search his wife’s office and computer in search of clues, she brusquely demands that he stop. Stung by her reaction, Lachlan begins to wonder just how well he knows Susie, and what her relationship to Gow might have been. Though Mina (Resolution, 2002, etc.) allows Gow to remain enigmatic even in death, she turns a piercing beam on both of the Harriots: the result is a series of dazzling, sinister revelations divulged in a howl of pain and grief.

A memorable portrait of a foundering marriage, as well as an unnervingly accomplished puzzler: the best yet from a still-rising star.