The Wrong Mother by Sophie Hannah

 

The news is brutal; a mother and young daughter had been found dead, each in a separate bathtub.  Worse, it appears as if the mother killed them both after a diary emerges that outlines her frustration with being a stay-at-home mother.  The husband, Mark Bretherick, is not a suspect as he was in the United States at a convention the entire week and had found the bodies when he arrived home.

Sally Thorning is shocked at the news, then shocked again when she sees Mark Bretherick.  She is a working mother, desperate to handle both a successful career and a marriage and two small children.  Last year, she had taken a week to herself and ended up having a fling with a man.  A man who gave his name as Mark Bretherick and described his wife and daughter and house.  A man who is not the Mark Bretherick whose picture is in the paper.

Things are different at the local police these days.  Charlie Zailer had transferred out of the detective section after she was humiliated at a party by the man she loves, Simon Waterhouse.  Simon is still in the detective bureau and missing Charlie, the only person he had trusted to understand his brilliant but offbeat thinking.  He doesn't know how he feels about her emotionally, as Simon's emotions are not something he spends time thinking about.  He is, however, sure that Geraldine Bretherick did not kill her daughter and herself and he is desperate to prove it.  Can he?

This is the third novel in the Zailer/Waterhouse series.  Sophie Hannah is a well-known name in the mystery genre and her plots twist and turn like a rollercoaster.  Readers will enjoy the slow building romance between Waterhouse and Zailer and spend as much pondering it as the mystery.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.