The Perfect Marriage: A Novel

by Adam Mitzner

Overview

The price of true love is betrayal, suspicion, and murder in a thriller of twisting suspense by the Amazon Charts bestselling author of The Best Friend.

James and Jessica Sommers are celebrating their first blissful year together, an unexpected second chance at true love. Unfortunately, their newfound shot at happiness is not without collateral damage.

There’s Jessica’s ex-husband. He pretends for all the world that he’s resilient and strong. If only for the sake of their teenage son, profoundly vulnerable in his own way. James’s ex has taken a different road. Bitter, vengeful, and threatening, she wants only the worst for the happy couple. And then there’s the couple themselves: Are they truly as in love as they seem?

When James enters into an extraordinarily profitable, if shady, transaction with a beautiful art dealer, Jessica and James’s seemingly perfect marriage takes a dark and tragic turn.

Amid suspicions, tested loyalties, revenge, and guilt, no one escapes unscathed from sins committed in the name of love.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781542005760
Publisher:	Amazon Publishing
Publication date:	04/01/2021
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Adam Mitzner is the acclaimed Amazon Charts bestselling author of Dead Certain, Never Goodbye, and The Best Friend in the Broden Legal series as well as the stand-alone thrillers A Matter of Will, A Conflict of Interest, A Case of Redemption, Losing Faith, and The Girl from Home. Suspense Magazine named A Conflict of Interest one of the best books of 2012, and in 2014 the American Bar Association nominated A Case of Redemption for a Silver Gavel Award. A practicing attorney in a Manhattan law firm, Mitzner and his family live in New York City. Visit him at www.adammitzner.com.

Editorial Reviews

02/22/2021

Jessica and James Sommers, the happily married couple at the center of this intriguing thriller from Mitzner (A Matter of Will), are grateful for the luxurious Manhattan lifestyle that James’s job as an art dealer provides them. Jessica’s teenage son from a previous marriage, Owen, has survived a serious bout with leukemia, and James has developed a close relationship with him. Then on a visit to the pediatric oncologist, tests show Owen’s cancer has recurred. The Sommers can’t afford the treatment that offers them their one hope, which their insurance won’t cover because it’s experimental. Desperate, James enters into a shady art deal with Reid Warwick. That same day, Jessica visits James’s office, only to find her husband has been murdered. Lt. Gabriel Velasquez of the NYPD has several suspects, including Reid, Jessica’s ex-husband, and James’s ex-wife, but he’s stymied. Each suspect has an alibi, and no security footage is available. Blood other than James’s was found at the scene, but the suspects all refuse to give DNA samples. Some tricky legal maneuvering ensues as the suspense builds. Fans of clever police procedurals will be satisfied. Agent: Scott Miller, Trident Media Group. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Delivers all the guilty pleasures the title promises.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Fans of clever police procedurals will be satisfied.” —Publishers Weekly

“Mitzner channels his inner Agatha Christie by deftly weaving the plot from a story about perfect marriages and fidelity to a murder mystery where almost anyone could be the culprit.” —Bookreporter

From the Publisher

2020-12-25
Days after a party celebrating the perfect New York couple's first anniversary, the roster of guests who’ve survived it is suddenly decreased by one.

Jessica and James Sommers have the ideal marriage. Of course, every marriage has its hiccups. Realtor Jessica left her first husband, high school biology teacher Wayne Fiske, and art dealer James left his first wife, investment banker Haley Sommers, following an adulterous affair. Wayne has forgiven Jessica enough to show up at the party, and Haley, who’s had a lot of time on her hands since getting fired from her high-paying job, violates a restraining order to sneak in so she can interrupt the happy couple’s anniversary toasts by announcing exactly what she thinks of them. Jessica and Wayne’s 17-year-old son, Owen, who survived a bout of leukemia four years ago, is told that it’s returned and that the frightfully expensive experimental treatment his oncologist recommends won’t be covered by insurance. James, desperate to earn more money he can give Jessica for her son, lets Reid Warwick, who has his eye on Jessica, suck him into a highly questionable deal to sell some Jackson Pollock sketches of dubious provenance. In short, virtually everyone in the cast acts as if they have a target on their back, and it’s a shame that only one of them will get bashed to death. Once he’s created his sublimely bitchy ensemble of well-groomed users and losers, Mitzner lets them run amok, subject only to their amour propre and their determination not to knuckle under to NYPD Lt. Gabriel Velasquez’s plaintive requests for the DNA samples that will end up fingering the perp.

Delivers all the guilty pleasures the title promises and leaves you pathetically grateful for your own petty social circle.

Kirkus Reviews