Relationships are never easy. Some can be fatal. Most of us have seen the parade of broken and dangerous marriages on Dateline. My husband refers to the television show as How I Killed My Wife And Almost Got Away With It. He’s not being dramatic. The show does feel that way. It’s 33 seasons of whatever the opposite of romance is.
I’m an expert on this topic. I was a divorce lawyer for more than twelve years in the D.C. metro area before retiring to salvage my sanity. I’ve seen and heard some terrible things. Most of them are too you’ve got to be kidding to survive editorial scrutiny. If I tried to write situations like some of the real-life shenanigans I’ve dealt with I’d get trapped in never-ending rounds of revisions.
My former career has been helpful to my thriller writing in one respect. I don’t have any problem imagining and creating people who are locked in difficult, noxious, and sometimes unbelievable situations. I write domestic thrillers and stories of marriages and relationships gone wrong. Totally fiction but really dysfunctional.
My newest, What The Wife Knew, is my messiest so far. It’s about a woman who blackmails a supposed national hero into marriage with the express intent of ruining him. Someone kills him before she can take him down, which is a shame because destroying him was her job.
Addison and Richmond are an example of some of the deliciously ruthless couples in thrillers. You might not want to know these people in real life or live near them…or let them watch your dog for the weekend…but when a truly dysfunctional couple loses control in a thriller the result is a satisfying read.
Picking only a few to highlight was not an easy task. I went with some older and some newer because, apparently, deadly marriages never go out of style.
My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing – This is a few years old. If you haven’t read it, buy it then go in blind. I’ll keep it brief: A lovely couple. Cute kids. Very together. Also, serial killers.
No One Will Know by Rose Carlyle – The perfect couple live the perfect life in a perfect setting. When they hire a woman to be their nanny she thinks it’s too good to be true…and it is. As if being pregnant isn’t scary enough without running into this duo.
The Guilty Couple by C. L. Taylor – The deceit is off-the-charts in this one. She was convicted of trying to murder her husband. Now that she’s out of prison, she wants to clear her name, reestablish a relationship with her daughter, and make her ex pay.
The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley – Everyone has a favorite Lucy Foley locked-room thriller. Mine is this one, mostly because married couple Francesca and Owen are so wildly dysfunctional both on their own and as a couple. Add in Foley’s expert rotating point-of-view narration and a fancy setting at a place called The Manor and you have a winner.
Rock, Paper, Scissors by Alice Feeney – Mr. and Mrs. Wright are not okay. He wants a weekend away. They need to repair their marriage. She wins a surprise trip to Scotland or does she? One of them is lying and when they get stranded the painful truth comes out.
There are a lot of thrillers about couples where a missing husband maybe isn’t what he seemed. This could be its own category. Her are two good ones from 2024: The Honeymoon by Shalini Boland (Stella’s new husband goes missing on their honeymoon—the same husband her father told her not to marry) and Just The Nicest Couple by Mary Kubica (two couples, one missing husband, so many secrets).
My final bit of advice: choose your life partners wisely.
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