Deception
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Overview
Things like this don't happen to people like us. That's what Lachlan Harriot thinks as he watches his wife, Susie, led to jail in handcuffs. Yes, Susie, a psychologist, was found covered in blood near the spot where one of her clients appears to have been murdered. But Susie is not a killer, Lachlan thinks. She's my wife. She's our child's mother. Secrets lurk behind closed doors, however, a dark truth made chillingly clear as Lachlan's efforts to prove Susie's innocence uncover an entire secret history—illicit affairs, false identities, unimaginable deception—and this brilliantly acclaimed, page-turning novel speeds toward a conclusion as shocking as it is ingenious.
Synopsis
From Scotland's most exciting up-and-coming mystery novelist comes a story of Lachlan Harriot, a man who refuses to believe his wife, Susie, is a killer - even though she had been working with Andrew Gow, a paroled serial killer, as his court-appointed psychologist, when she was found covered in blood near the spot where his and his wife's bodies were discovered. Desperate to clear his wife's name, Lachlan searches her home office for proof of her innocence. What he finds in this formerly off-limits place is an unimaginable world that makes him question his wife and their life together. But something continues to trouble him, and he, believing that this is where the truth lies, follows his hunch beyond all reason and hope.A masterstroke of compelling originality that more than lives up to the promise of Mina's Garnethill trilogy (Daily Record, U.K.)
The New York Times - Marilyn Stasio
In her new novel, set in the comfortable professional household of a prison psychiatrist who treats the damaged goods of the no-hope slums, Mina executes a stunning shift in style and tone to come up with an entirely different perspective on her recurring theme -- that domestic dysfunction breeds criminal violence.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
Admit it: You love gossip. Nobody on this planet dishes it better than Candace Bushnell, the sassy author who guided us through Sex and the City, Four Blondes, Trading Up, and Lipstick Jungle. In One Fifth Avenue, she checks in at a landmark Manhattan address to reveal the upscale lives of its diverse tenants. Their money is old or new; their careers on the rise or in full retreat; their motives reckless or greedy; but no apartment building's Art Deco façade can hide their secrets from the deliciously prying eyes of tattletale Bushnell. High-rise entertainment; scandalous fun.Claudia Deane
One Fifth Avenue is definitely not a book to read for plot…This is a book you read because it takes some of the challenges of modern, middle-age urban life and has the characters try to meet them amid a swirl of heliports and Hamptons visits, and because Bushnell has a track record of channeling the N.Y.C. zeitgeist.—The Washington Post
Patrick Anderson
… Mina's novel is a smart example of the crime novel as postmodern puzzle, a work that coolly offers to match wits with the unwary reader and is not likely to lose the game.— The Washington Post
Marilyn Stasio
In her new novel, set in the comfortable professional household of a prison psychiatrist who treats the damaged goods of the no-hope slums, Mina executes a stunning shift in style and tone to come up with an entirely different perspective on her recurring theme -- that domestic dysfunction breeds criminal violence.— The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
When psychiatrist Susie Harriott is convicted of murdering Glasgow serial killer Andrew Gow, her husband, Lachlan, embarks on a frantic search for material that may help with her appeal. But in going through her files, he finds layer upon layer of nasty secrets... or does he? Lachlan's diaries tell the dark and complicated story, claiming, variously, both absolute fact and deliberate fantasy. In medical school when he met Susie, Lachlan gave up his day job to be a house husband and dream of being a writer after the birth of their daughter, Margie, now a toddler. Deception (and self-deception) abounds, including the inevitable dalliance between Lachie and the au pair, Yeni, who shares her employer's primal hunger for sticky childhood candies. But it's voice, not event, that grabs hold of the reader and won't let go. Lachlan Harriott immerses us in his obsessions; like Nabokov's Humbert Humbert, he repels and commands sympathy in the same instant. He is a charming, comic, intelligent narrator-and a man who might happily see his wife rot in prison, not for murder, but for the greater sin of rejecting him. Susie herself is seen as if through a long lens that can barely contain her beautiful, sorrowful image; what she did or didn't do is less compelling than what her husband reveals (or invents) about himself in his new life after her conviction. Mystery lovers have lately been looking to Scotland, in part because of Mina's fast-growing reputation; this stunning new work can only bolster the trend. Agent, Henry Dunow. (Aug.) Forecast: A five-city tour and a blurb from George Pelecanos should help introduce Mina to a wider U.S. audience. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.Publishers Weekly
Bushnell's latest offering tells the tale of a group of female Manhattanites who live out, or dream of living out, their fantasies in the Art Deco tower of One Fifth Avenue. The prose is reminiscent of the typical Bushnell drawl, which became so popular in Sex and the City. Although the writing is somewhat familiar, narrator Donna Murphy is refreshing in her inspired reading. Murphy displays a talent for interpreting characters on the page and giving them rich, textured voices and personalities that make listening a sheer pleasure. Though the story lacks originality, Murphy's performance brings a certain theatrical atmosphere to the tale, making it an enjoyable, visual listen. A Hyperion hardcover (Reviews, July 28).(Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Library Journal
New York Observer columnist-turned-New York Times best-selling novelist Bushnell (
—Beth Traylor