The Butcher's Wife

Robin Patterson has started following her husband, and she dreads what she will learn. Her life had seemed perfect until the night he came home with blood on his shirt. He told her it was a deer, hit on a dark, empty road.

A week later it happens again. This time there is blood on his shirt, scratch marks across his back, and a string of explanations that do not hold together. That, at least, is Robin's version of events.

Private investigator Jimmy Hunter is less certain. He has a dark and disturbing past of his own, which makes him good at spotting lies, but this case resists him. The news reports a violent killer at large, and the local river has given up human remains.

The book is a thriller built on doubt. Jimmy has to weigh whether the husband is the killer, whether Robin is being honest with him, and whether the two of them are tied to something larger and darker than he has reckoned with. Suspicion falls on more than one person, and the questions pile up with each new detail.