Reviews

I’m not often rendered speechless. But waking up to see that THE WIFE, THE MAID, AND THE MISTRESS was reviewed in The New York Times Sunday Book Review has left me with me with only two words available: thank you.

“Good crime stories don’t stay buried, and Ariel Lawhon’s new novel, THE WIFE, THE MAID, AND THE MISTRESS digs up the case of the so-called Missingest Man in New York and feasts on its bones…..This case was an a la carte menu of the era’s social hot buttons: chorus girls, speakeasies, bootleggers, Tammany Hall corruption, nattily clad gangsters and irritating rich people…..Lawhon has a gift for lean banter and descriptive shorthand….But don’t let Lawhon’s straightforward style and narrative restraint fool you. This book is more meticulously choreographed than a chorus line. It all pays off. Clues accumulate. Each scene proves important. Everyone lies. Once the rabbit is out of the hat everything takes on a different texture, reorganizes and makes sense. A second reading, like a second cocktail, is almost better than the first.”