It was recently pointed out to me by a friend that my books are stuffed to the gills with cheating spouses. This wasn’t new information, exactly, but it did make me wonder why that was the case. Was it a peculiar obsession of mine, or was it the fact that cheating spouses are great fuel for thriller novels? I suspect it’s a little bit of both. And while all my books have a glut of unfaithful lovers, my latest, Every Vow You Break, is a novel in which the entire plot turns on a single moment of weakness, when a bride-to-be has a drunken one-night fling on her bachelorette weekend.
One of the reasons adultery works so well in the realm of suspense fiction is that it can so often snowball into criminal acts. It’s a doorway to lies, to blackmail, and to murder, of course; and it also makes the adulterer vulnerable, desperate to cover up their acts. And so I present to you seven of my favorite thrillers, all of which find interesting ways to incorporate the cheating spouse.
Death on the Nile, by Agatha Christie (1937)
This was the first Christie novel I fell in love with, and it remains one of my favorites to this day. It has such a clever conceit, centered around a love triangle between a young married couple and a spurned woman. And like the best of Christie’s novels, the plot hinges on the difference between what people think they see, and what is actually happening.
The End of the Affair, by Graham Greene (1951)
Not a traditional suspense novel by any stretch, but there is a large mystery at the heart of this story of a writer obsessed with a married woman. As the novel begins writer Maurice Bendrix is still reeling from his affair with Sarah, the wife of a neighbor and acquaintance. Maurice learns from the husband that Sarah seems to have taken a new lover and they hire a private investigator to uncover the truth.
Soft Touch, by John D. MacDonald (1959)
John D. MacDonald actually wrote at least two novels that are what I’d call “adultery thrillers,” books that are entirely focused on marriages destroyed by lies. But Soft Touch, one of MacDonald’s finest noirs, is a fast-paced crime thriller in which two old friends try to pull off a heist while embroiled in a love triangle. It’s dark and merciless and shows how easily a marriage (and several lives) can be destroyed by lust and greed.
Rosemary’s Baby, by Ira Levin (1967)
I’m stretching just a bit with this one, although I honestly believe it’s one of the great infidelity thrillers. Rosemary is the spurned wife. Guy, her husband, is the cheater. The twist, of course, is that he’s not cheating with another woman but with a coven of witches in their new apartment building. Oh, and there’s a baby involved.
Eye of the Needle, by Ken Follett (1978)
A terrific spy thriller in which a German spy stationed in England before D-Day is trying to get back to the homeland to deliver history-altering information. He winds up on an island off the coast of Scotland, marooned during a storm with an unhappy husband and wife, and the book shifts brilliantly into an adultery thriller with huge consequences.
Notes on a Scandal, by Zoe Heller (2003)
Again, not a traditional thriller, but a book with a great unreliable narrator, a twisting storyline, and a dark undercurrent. An older teacher at a primary school learns that a younger teacher is engaged in an extramarital affair with a student and uses that information to gain all sorts of sinister control.
***
