The Dark Room by Minette Walters

 

Jinx Kingsley comes to in a hospital bed.  She is told that she ran her car into a cement post and is on suicide watch.  Jinx doesn't remember anything of that nor of a prior attempt in her garage with carbon monoxide.  In fact, Jinx, doesn't remember anything of the past week.

She is sent to a rehabilitation center where the head of the clinic tries to help her remember what happened.  Everyone tells her that she did this after her fiance Leo, told her weeks before their wedding that he was leaving her for her best friend, Meg.  Jinx doesn't think she would have cared enough to kill herself over Leo.  She didn't kill herself when her first husband was bludgeoned to death, did she?

Complicating matters is the fact that Leo and Meg have disappeared.  They told their families they were going overseas until the scandal died down but two bodies have been found.  Did Jinx kill them in a fit of rage?  Did her millionaire father, Adam Kingsley, who made his fortune as a thug, avenge his family's honor?  Did Jinx's useless brothers do it to set her up?  Did one of Meg's other men get jealous and kill his lover and his rival?  Jinx needs to get her memory back before she shares the same fate.

Minette Walters is one of the best English mystery writers although she has focused lately on historical fiction.  Her mystery work has won the American Edgar Allen Poe Award and the British Golden Daggar award.  Readers will follow Jinx on a trip through the past as she attempts to remember what happened and a police investigation that is focusing on her as the prime suspect.  There are twists and turns and Jinx refuses to be the poor pitiful victim as she tries to figure out how to solve the mystery and start her life again.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.