Two dead wives

Parks' sequel to Woman Last Seen (2021) is an atmospheric domestic-suspense thriller that takes place during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown. It picks up where the first book ended, immediately immersing the reader in the search for Kylie Gillingham, a missing woman with two identities. As a known bigamist, she had been living a double life. Presuming Kylie dead, DCI Clements investigates this complex case. But has a crime really been committed? Suspicion, doubt, and uncertainty are cast on multiple characters, and the reader is kept in the dark. Parks explores complicated relationships, betrayal, and memory loss in the lead-up to Freedom Saturday, the reopening of England post-shutdown. Readers will experience the claustrophobia and fear associated with the pandemic and its restrictions as well as the trauma it left in its aftermath. Is Kylie just lost, missing, or murdered? Two Dead Wives will keep readers guessing until the very end. This book will likely appeal to those who read Carola Lovering, Michelle Campbell, and Jeneva Rose.

Bestseller Parks follows up 2022's Woman Last Seen with an intriguing, multilayered suspense tale set in London during the height of Covid-19 lockdowns. Leigh Fletcher, doting wife to Mark and mother to the couple's two sons, has gone missing. While investigating the disappearance, Det. Insp. Clements discovers that Leigh, using the pseudonym Kai, is also married to wealthy Dutch businessman Daan Janssen. Both husbands become prime suspects in Leigh/Kai's disappearance; though no body has been found, Clements considers that "both a problem and a tremulous, tantalizing possibility." Meanwhile, Stacie Jones is recovering at her father's farmhouse in rural England from a devastating illness that has left her with severe memory loss. She struggles to remember who she is and how she arrived there. The rather outlandish plot glides by as readers are drawn into the lives of Parks's complex, finely drawn characters, whose viewpoints she smoothly shifts between while dropping subtle hints about how the two main plot threads connect. It makes for fast and enjoyable reading. (Dec.)