Police detectives scramble to prove which of the furious husbands killed the bigamist wife who wronged them in Adele Parks's Two Dead Wives, the kinetic mystery-thriller and follow-up to Woman Last Seen.
Constable Tanner is positive that rich, successful businessman Daan Janssen killed his wife, Kai. Tanner's senior partner, Detective Constable Clements, knows Daan might have killed Kai, but her gut feeling says struggling landscaper Mark Fletcher may have murdered his wife, Leigh. The two cases are one. Kai and Leigh are one person, a bigamist named Kylie Gillingham who left behind two angry husbands. Each husband has a motive. Single father Mark is initially beyond suspicion due to an outpouring of sympathy--he now has to raise two sons on his own--until Fiona, the best friend of Leigh (aka Kylie), suddenly moves in with him. But Daan draws attention by escaping back to his home in the Netherlands; he prefers to cooperate with police via Microsoft Teams. Kylie had been held in an empty apartment where Daan and Kai lived. In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, bored tongues wag and splashy headlines swirl around the notion of two dead wives, while the police rush to find the killer of one dead body.
Adele Parks planned to leave the heart-pumping ending of the prequel, Woman Last Seen, on a somewhat ambiguous cliffhanger. However, the author's sister, and a thousand other fan e-mails, convinced her of the need for a sequel addressing comeuppance for the killer. The resulting Two Dead Wives is a shocking, delectable standalone that adds another bizarre twist. --Paul Dinh-McCrillis, freelance reviewer