MURDER BY SUGGESTION

It’s the gals against the guys as Ellie Quicke (Murder for Nothing, 2017, etc.) tries to referee a slugfest between five businessmen and their wives.

Ellie’s first whiff of trouble comes when her daughter, Diana, shows up on her doorstep in a panic. Diana’s husband, Evan, has thrown her out without a single one of their joint credit cards, all because she and four girlfriends were joking online about how they might do away with their neglectful spouses, who spend every weekend schmoozing at the golf club, leaving them at the bar to drink and plot mayhem. Evan’s justification for this drastic step is that Bunny Brewster, one of the golf club fivesome, died when his pills got mixed up, precisely the method one of the wives suggested. Evan claims to fear that he’ll become the next victim. But Ellie suspects there’s more to the plot than first meets the eye when the remaining four wives—Barbie, Russet, Trish, and Kat—follow Diana’s lead and seek asylum in Ellie’s capacious house after their husbands follow suit and chuck them out. Could all the men be worried they’ll be their wives’ next targets? Or have they found a convenient way to rid themselves of their aging spouses and move on to greener pastures? As Ellie helps the women fight back, her opponents up the ante, until Ellie finds her own marriage in deadly peril.

Heley’s latest entry delivers both more and less than it promises. The women show grit and ingenuity, while the men are all formula bluster and bad behavior, and the solution comes straight out of left field.