* Review contains spoiler*
This in an interesting story on a similar bent to the Tom Ripley stories. Henry is a writer, at least that is what everyone thinks. He laps up the attention and deals with the media and takes the spoils a multi-bestselling author enjoys. The brains behind the operation however is his quiet wife Martha, who does not want to have any attention and gets on with her writing at night, endlessly churning out new stories. Henry has a problem, he has a mistress, she happens to be his editor Betty – and the mistress is pregnant and he needs to make his problem go away, so naturally his answer to this is to push her car off a cliff making it look like an accident.
This proves to start him unravelling as the occupant of the car was in fact his wife, and when his mistress turns up on his doorstep distraught he has to do some quick thinking. With the end of his new novel now last and his publishing house reliant upon him to steer them out of the red Henry is in a pickle. Not only this but one particular police officer isn’t buying his story. Henry seems to talk and charm his way out of trouble, eliminating other problems as they arise, some times with a little help from his friends. To us his actions may seem outrageous but to him they are perfectly natural. Indeed even destroying his house to rid himself of a marten that has taken up residence seems perfectly plausible!
There is plenty of black humour and well observed characterisation throughout the story and you are always sure that Henry is about to be found out as his facade slips every now and again, but with quirks of fate and his money to fall back on to get himself out of trouble Henry manages to wriggle out of the problems much of the time! This is the first novel from the German author and well worth a read.
4/5
