To Kill a Wife (Chief Inspector Peach Mystery 3)

Verna Hume isn’t an easy woman to be around. Her husband, Martin, knows that all too well.

Their marriage had long since died and out of spite, Verna refuses to give Martin the divorce he wants.

And in the meantime, she has numerous affairs with other men – her latest man, one Hugh Pearson of Pearson’s Electronics.

It’s then that Martin thinks: I could just kill her.

As he toys with plans to kill her, he feels a new lease of life. Everything from his career to his social life is on the up.

He starts an affair of his own – with Verna’s sister, Sue; a single mother to a wonderful little boy.

Oblivious to everything but her future with Hugh, Verna completely ignores Martin going away for the weekend.

To his surprise, when Martin returns home, he finds Verna dead; to add to the irony, he’s arrested for her murder.

It seems an easy case to the police but DI Dennis Peach doesn’t think Martin did it. And his partner Lucy Blake is in agreement.

As the pair soon discover, Verna Hume had many enemies other than Martin and Sue.

There’s her long-time business partner and friend, Barbara Harris, who had a nasty disagreement with Verna the day before her death.

There’s Hugh Pearson, who while happy to sleep with Verna was not keen on Verna’s insistence that they get married and set up home together.

There are her own parents, her father and stepmother – Dean and Alice Osbourne – whom, Verna treated awfully.

And then there are all her ex-lover.

It’s clear that Martin is innocent, his alibi watertight, and so it’s up to Peach and Blake to uncover the real murderer.

To Kill A Wife is a suspenseful and thrilling murder mystery.