A Good Marriage

Darcy Anderson has spent 27 years married to Bob, an accountant in Portland, Maine. Together they run a mail-order business that sells and appraises rare coins, and their life is happy and ordinary. While Bob is away on a trip, Darcy goes into the garage for batteries and finds a magazine of sadomasochistic images among his things.

The magazine leads her to a hidden compartment behind the baseboard. Inside is a box holding the ID cards of Marjorie Duvall, a victim of the serial killer known as "Beadie". Darcy searches for Beadie online and checks Bob's business records against the murder locations. He was close to most of the crimes.

Bob comes home early, having guessed what she found. He calmly tells her about Brian Delahany, a sadistic friend nicknamed "BD", and the school shooting the two planned as teenagers. He asks her to let the matter rest for the sake of the family. Darcy pretends to agree, on the condition that he bury the cards deep in the woods.

Privately, she is working out how to stop him from killing again. Months later, after a lucky coin find and a night of champagne, she acts on a plan. Then a retired detective, Holt Ramsey, arrives at the house with his own suspicions about Bob and about her.

The book is a crime thriller told close to Darcy, and it moves from domestic quiet to dread in the space of one afternoon in a garage.