Click to purchase
I loved LaPlante’s first novel, Turn of Mind, and it took two years to get the second – but it was worth the wait.
Dr. John Taylor is a renowned plastic surgeon who shuns vanity procedures; instead he uses his skills to help children. But when Taylor is found dead in a Palo Alto hotel, apparently of a heart attack but with some suspicious bruises and a needle mark, a young detective, Samantha Adams, is assigned the case. Her normal caseload includes an occasional burglary or dog barking complaint, so she is a little out of her depth here but determined.
Taylor is a pillar of the community, as his wife Deborah, until it is discovered that he was a closet polygamist, with two other wives in other cities. Deborah knew about the others and shocks Samantha when she explains that she helped coordinate John’s time with them. But the other wives, Helen and MJ, had no knowledge of Deborah or each other.
Each wife and the detective get to tell their own stories here, and motives abound. And to complicate things further, Taylor’s partners, who basically made the money for the partnership by doing facelifts and breast augmentations and other popular procedures, had been pressuring him to allow them to add hire more plastic surgeons to grow their side of the practice but he held veto power and used it.
Practically every character has motive but none seem to have opportunity, creating quite the conundrum for Samantha.
The writing is crisp and the characters well developed. All the varied relationships are explored and themes of trust, love, passion, jealousy and more will give book groups lots to discuss.
This is another excellent literary thriller from LaPlante.
4/14 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch
A CIRCLE OF WIVES by Alice LaPlante. Atlantic Monthly Press; First Edition edition (March 4, 2014). ISBN 978-0802122346. 325p.
Stacy Alesi's BookBitch.com™ 