'My Lovely Wife' could easily be 2019's 'Girl on the Train. As I read this novel, I found myself mentally casting the movie in my head, because there is a cinematic quality to the book that cannot be overlooked. As the novel unwinds, the reader, or at least this reader, is surprised by a brilliant plot twist toward the end of the saga, and a horrific denouement that is perhaps not so unexpected if we've been paying attention. We know it's not Tobias, and most probably not Quentin, these being personas he adopts for the 'extracurricular activities,' in which he and his wife participate, seemingly as partners. I went back over the novel a few times to see if the reader actually knows the narrator's real name. Along the way, we learn about the children, the friends, the acquaintances, the everyday life in the affluent area in which the family lives, and the victims, but not too much about the narrator, husband of Millicent, the 'lovely wife' of the title. Almost from the beginning we know what the couple is doing we gradually learn the why and the how. Agent: Barbara Poelle, Irene Goodman Literary.

Readers will eagerly await Downing’s next thriller. The first-person, present-tense narration makes readers feel uncomfortably complicit in all that transpires, underscoring the plot’s grim and twisted nature. Downing’s tale unfolds slowly and sinuously, building tension about the couples’ fate while revealing the origins of their homicidal hobby. Millicent’s husband initially relishes the idea of a suspicion-free killing spree, but quickly learns that resurrecting the local bogeyman has consequences.

Her debut novel, My Lovely Wife, was a Richard and Judy Book Club pick and a. to match that of Owen Oliver Riley, a notorious local serial killer who escaped conviction. Samantha Downing was born in the Bay Area, and currently lives in New Orleans. Millicent was supposed to have immediately killed and dumped Lindsay in a swamp, but she now claims that in order to distract the authorities, she changed their m.o. This revelation shocks the book’s 39-year-old unnamed narrator, since he and his wife, Millicent, were the ones who abducted Lindsay as part of a ploy to spice up their marriage. Police identify the victim as Lindsay, a young woman who went missing a year earlier and was apparently held captive for months before being strangled. The discovery of a corpse in an abandoned Woodview, Fla., motel kick-starts Downing’s taut debut.

My lovely wife book