The Perfect Marriage

Of course this is a murder mystery so we know it wasn't a perfect marriage, but it is also the most imperfect book that I have ever forced myself to read. If it wee not a book group selection for my Mystery Book Group, I would have stopped after 25 pages. As it was, because I could not rationalize tearing out every page of a library book with something stupid on it, I had to content myself with putting mini-post-its wherever I found them. See my photo. The writing is hyperbolic in the extreme. Analogies and metaphors are totally inappropriate. They should fire this author's editor. 

The cover of the book offers this summary: "His mistress is dead. His wife [a high-powered defence attorney] is his only hope." And here is the publisher's summary of the storyline: "Sarah Morgan is a successful and powerful defense attorney in Washington D.C. As a named partner at her firm, life is going exactly how she planned. The same cannot be said for her husband, Adam. He's a struggling writer who has had little success in his career and he tires of his and Sarah's relationship as she is constantly working. Out in the secluded woods, at the couple's lake house, Adam engages in a passionate affair with Kelly Summers. But one morning everything changes. Kelly is found brutally stabbed to death and now, Sarah must take on her hardest case yet, defending her own husband, a man accused of murdering his mistress."

The characters are caricatures. The woman "protagonist (and I use the term loosely), Sarah, wears only Laboutin spike heels and pencil skirt suits from Chanel, etc. and everytime I had to read one more description of what people were wearing I wanted to scream. She is certainly the most unprofessional high-powered attorney I have ever encountered in literature (or life). The use of cursing (especially "fuck") is overwhelming and unnecessary except to make the characters even more unlikeable. Her mousey assistant Anne tries to dress like her, and follows her around like a lovesick puppy. Husband and accused murderer, Adam, is the most worthless, oversexed, impulsive and out of control spouse you could ever want to imagine. Why would anyone ever marry him --except for, apparently, the great sex--and why anyone would defend him is beyond me and beyond most of the other characters as well. 

I could not even find a review of this book by reputable sources. I can't imagine why the library chose this to be a book group kit. One of the reader reviews pithily noted "Suffice to say, hideous people doing hideous things. The end." I cannot "unrecommend" this book strongly enough.