the doctor's wife book review

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Word of Mouth

Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, the doctor's wife.

Perhaps I'm in danger of becoming one of those cynical single urbanites, but whenever I pick up a novel that starts out with a seemingly perfect couple and their seemingly perfect children, living in a seemingly perfect neighborhood, I want to rub my hands together with glee. You just KNOW it's all going downhill from there. But even this cynical urbanite was surprised by the depths to which Elizabeth Brundage will go with her characters. And THE DOCTOR'S WIFE is all the better for it. Note here: if your book club has gotten too genteel lately and is in need of a good cage-rattling, this is just the novel to do it.

THE DOCTOR'S WIFE is set in upstate New York --- civil, picturesque, well-mannered upstate New York --- and centers on Michael and Annie Knowles, the kind of couple that sits around listening to NPR's soothing, well-modulated liberal voices on Sunday mornings while doing the crossword in the  Times ; the smell of their toasted designer bagels mingling with the scent of their designer coffee, while their perfect children in Gap chic are playing nearby before rushing off to soccer and other mainstays of suburban life. Michael is a young, extremely busy and successful OB/GYN at a prominent hospital; Annie is a Miss Porter's School-educated college professor who teaches creative writing (naturally). But wait --- is that a rat we smell amidst the Starbucks?

Annie is growing bored being "the doctor's wife," particularly since the Good Doctor is never around. It appears that Doc's bell is being rung these days by Celina James, an old flame who appeals to much more than Michael's libido --- she has a good-sized socio-political agenda wrapped up in the shape of her Women's Health Clinic, the town's only provider of abortions. Celina enlists Michael to help her at the Clinic, and soon Michael's already-limited free time from the hospital is being spent at Celina's clinic. There are no sparks between them these days except professional ones, but clearly he prefers the energy of Celina to Annie's world.

Unfortunately for Michael, the guy who IS around for Annie just happens to be Tall, Brooding, Successful-yet-Misunderstood Suffering Artist-turned-Art-Professor Simon Haas. Never mind that Simon himself is married to the beautiful Lydia Haas, his longtime muse, though she has enough skeletons in her closet to populate a Grateful Dead concert. When the Knowles family starts getting all kinds of anonymous threats, it's not clear at first where they're coming from or why --- are they the work of the Right-Wing Extremists running around town protesting Michael's moonlighting gig, or are these more personal in nature?

What evolves is a novel of psychological suspense that is edgy and compelling. Brundage's sense of plot and timing is impeccable, and she really knows how to hook a reader from the very first chapter. The action starts with a kidnapping and it does not let up from there. The story unfolds with many of the twists coming out of the past.

While her characters were multi-faceted, complex and memorable --- particularly the Haas family --- I confess to being ultimately disappointed in the somewhat black-and-white view she took on the abortion issue. The way the characters are depicted, everyone who feels abortion is wrong is not only half-crazy but leans so far to the "Religious Right" that they're in danger of falling over. Still, enough time and devotion are spent developing all of the primary characters to keep this from being overwhelmingly negative. In fact, even the two-dimensional characters provide ample fodder for discussion.

Surprisingly, this is Brundage's first novel and is sure to be a tough act to follow --- although I for one will be looking forward to seeing her try. Full of suspense, memorable characters and thought-provoking issues, I can pretty much guarantee that THE DOCTOR'S WIFE will be making its rounds for a long time to come.

   --- Reviewed by Lourdes Orive

THE DOCTOR'S WIFE tells a despicable tale about a despicable bunch of people engaged in despicable practices. No matter where you are on the political spectrum, whether you're here on the right with me or over there on the left, there is something in THE DOCTOR'S WIFE that will make you furious.

I must admit that I'm absolutely livid over this book, yet I would have read it from beginning to end even if I wasn't reviewing it. I spent as much time throwing it across the room as I did reading it, but I also kept picking it back up. It's that's good. It inspired emotion in me. It also made me write a check to Right to Life; it may outrage you in a different manner, compelling you to volunteer some hours at Planned Parenthood.

THE DOCTOR'S WIFE does not contain one major character who is, on balance, likable. There's the doctor, Michael Knowles, who has a respectable OB/GYN practice at a major hospital. The strain of Knowles's practice is wearing him down and quietly destroying his home life, so what does he do? He begins a Saturday practice at a local aboritorium run by his former lover. Knowles is clueless; his kids all but consider him a stranger, his wife is wanting some attention (we'll get to her in a minute), and he can't figure out why his partners in his obstetrics practice, not to mention his co-workers at the hospital, might object to his Saturday side work.

Then there is Annie, the wife. A king-sized pain in the rear, that one. Given the choice between spending a Saturday afternoon with her politically correct self and performing abortions, one almost --- almost --- can understand Knowles picking the latter. Annie teaches writing at a private local women's college, turning potentially good brains into skulls full of mush. She refuses to wear sexy lingerie for her husband for "political" reasons and even grudgingly supports her husband's Saturday activities, even as her children cry for dad's presence.

Annie's sexual politics are challenged, however, when she attracts the attention of Simon Haas. Haas is the art professor at the college, a once acclaimed painter whose work, from the sound of it, treads the line between art and kiddie porn and who sniffs around his young female students like a blind dog in a meathouse where the tenderloins sniff back. Haas is married to Lydia, yet that doesn't prevent him from brushing up against Annie --- literally.

Haas became Lydia's de facto guardian when she was 14 years old. He made his reputation with his seminude paintings of her, works that were at once erotic and disturbing. Lydia has slipped loose of her mental moorings well before we meet her in THE DOCTOR'S WIFE, due in equal parts to her life before and with Haas. Haas, who ostensibly rescued her from an unspeakable home life, has exploited her in his paintings and, among other things, forced her to have an abortion that she didn't want --- didn't "choose" --- but that, she was assured, was for her own good.

And those are just the major characters. There is also an extremist pro-life group led by a cartoon of a preacher named Reverend Tim, who happens to be the chaplain at Michael Knowles's hospital. It is difficult to understand Reverend Tim's allure --- one is reminded of the cheerfully delusional, terminally ill cleric in HBO's "Deadwood." The reverend coerces Lydia into planting a bomb in the aboritorium and indirectly orchestrates an attempt to assassinate Knowles in an idiotic Keystone Kops fashion that would never work in a hundred years.

About the only likable characters in THE DOCTOR'S WIFE are the Knowles children, who we come to know intermittently and well (and who instinctively recoil from their dad's Saturday morning practice); the children who go into, but not out of, the aboritorium, and who we come to know not at all; and a couple of family pets.

So...why do you need to read THE DOCTOR'S WIFE? For the core of the tale. Brundage makes you care about what happens to these characters, even if you want the principals all consigned to various levels of hell. Annie is a self-absorbed, unsympathetic character, yet, as she is drawn into the affair with Haas, one can feel her conflict as if it was the reader's own. And what for Haas began as a conquest ends with him unexpectedly entrapped when he slowly (for reasons that are never quite clear) finds himself falling in love with Annie.

And Lydia. She may be a victim and is perhaps uneducated, but she isn't stupid nor helpless. No, this is a very dangerous woman. She knows her husband is going to be involved with Annie almost as soon as he does. Goaded by Reverend Tim, Lydia slowly but surely goes after Annie. One is put somewhat in the mind of  Fatal Attraction  at times, in the sense that such affairs, no matter how well or ill-intended, always come with a price that is more often than not paid with dear and sad coin. We all have choices, but the choices we make are sometimes wrong.

There are some flaws in the book --- the author mistakes libel for slander at one point, and becomes confused about the difference between a revolver and a pistol, a cartridge and a chamber. And what ultimately happened to Reverend Tim in the kitchen? But that said, it's a book that stays with you.

THE DOCTOR'S WIFE is a multi-layered work, a cautionary tale that is sure to be controversial for everyone. Bring it to your reading group with a wrestling mat. You're all going to need it.

    --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Reviewed by Lourdes Orive and Joe Hartlaub on November 29, 2005

The Doctor's Wife by Elizabeth Brundage

• Publication Date: November 29, 2005
• Genres: Fiction , Thriller
• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Plume
• ISBN-10: 0452286913
• ISBN-13: 9780452286917

The Doctor’s Wife

On Sale Now

“The memory starts here, in my apron pocket, with the gun.”

Lydia Haas is devoted to Jesus, her church, and her husband. Only recently, after it’s too late, has she understood how much she has sacrificed to all of them.

Michael Knowles is a rising young doctor, an OB/gyn at a prominent hospital. A man committed to his principles, to rescues with uncertain outcomes; to his wife. The life they’ve made. He never intended to have to make a choice.

Annie Knowles is the “doctor’s wife.” The first time she walked into their 1812 Federal-style home in High Meadow, an idyllic town in upstate New York, she thought she’d be happy there forever. But that dream wore thin, and another man – a colleague at the local college where Annie teaches – is insinuating himself slowly, surely, passionately into her life.

Simon Haas’ paintings of his wife Lydia – dating from when she was a child – made him famous. The story behind those paintings, and behind his marriage, is not one Simon chooses to tell. Until he meets Annie Knowles.

Elizabeth Brundage’s stunning debut work of fiction is the story of these four and the cataclysmic intersection of their lives.

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“…What keeps a reader turning the pages in this well-crafted work is not to find out what disasters befall the Knowles family, Simon and Lydia – the flash forward storytelling style makes that clear in the first 30 pages – but to discover what prompts each character’s actions, and to understand what motivates them to make the turns that eventually lead to the anguished, very human circumstances in which in which they find themselves. Setting The Doctor’s Wife in small town America – that much mythologized place from which expressions like “family values” are supposed to spring – allows Brundage to underscore how personal and intimate this nation’s “culture war” truly is.” —MS. Magazine

“Appearances are deceiving in this psychological thriller… a compelling read.” —The Boston Globe

“Thrilling page-turner” —Albany Times-Union

“A Page turner that will linger in reader’s minds long after they finish the book.” —Connecticut Post

“An examination of w hat happens when we are drawn to the very thing that promises to destroy us.” —Publisher’s Weekly

“Complex, cleverly constructed narrative provides a slow unfolding of the intricate relationship among the characters…This page-turner will appeal to a broad readership.” —Booklist

“The Doctor’s Wife kept me up two nights – the first was the one in which I read it, and the second was the night when I kept trying to argue with her. ‘He wouldn’t do that,’ I wanted to say-but yes, he would. He would almost surely do all that. And so would she.” —Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina and Cavedweller

“The Doctor’s Wife is certainly a tense and compelling psychological thriller, but it’s more than just a page turner. In her dark depiction of small-town intolerance, Brundage invites us to question our moral assumptions, social responsibilities, in short, our engagement with the world.” —Ruth Ozeki, author of My Year of Meats and All Over Creation

“Elizabeth Brundage has exquisitely captured the tension that resides at the crossroads of self and society. The Doctor’s Wife encapsulates not only our uncertain, conflicted times but the maddening, endearing, fascinating contradictions of the American moral construct. This novel is as politically pertinent as it is a page-turner.” —Megan Daum, author of The Quality of Life Report

“Elizabeth Brundage has written a deliciously dark, finely observed, and ultimately thrilling morality tale. The Doctor’s Wife is a full meal of sex, danger, and small-town paranoia which I greedily devoured.” —Laurie Fox, author of The Lost Girls

“Elizabeth Brundage’s prose reveals an honesty, clarity and grace uncommon for any novel, let alone a debut, and her insights consistently surprise and astonish. Even more impressively, she tackles a topic currently dividing the American spirit with feverish rancor and brings not just conviction but compassion to her portrayal. The Doctor’s Wife is a novel to savor, praise and share.” —David Corbett, author of The Devil’s Redhead and Done For A Dime

“From the very first paragraph of Elizabeth Brundage’s debut…it is evident things will not end neatly. No character inhabiting this story will escape unscathed from the choices they’ve made…a well-crafted work.” —Ms. Magazine

“A fine debut, full of psychological suspense, plot twists and turns, malice disguised as religion, the taint of incest, and cheating spouses.” —Library Journal

SOMETIME AFTER MIDNIGHT Michael Knowles wakes to the sound of his beeper and picks up the phone. “You want Finney,” he tells the page operator. “I’m not on call tonight.”

“You are now, Dr. Knowles,” the operator says officiously, and puts him through to the ER. A nurse comes on and brings him up to speed in a voice shrill with hysteria. The patient, she explains, a thirteen-year-old girl from Arbor Hill, is in labor, four months premature. “Boyfriend dropped her off about an hour ago and split. No prenatal care, no insurance. Now she’s bleeding all over the place and I can’t get anyone to give me a consult. Your partner’s puking his guts out in the men’s room. I’m told it’s food poisoning.”

“Give me twenty minutes,” Michael mutters, and like a man called to the service of war he grabs his coat. He had fallen asleep on the couch in the study. He climbs the stairs quietly, feeling strangely like a guest in his own home, wary of the light that burns on his wife’s bedside table. He enters the room uneasily, dreading a strained encounter, but Annie is asleep and all the lines of discord have vanished from her face. For a moment he marvels at her beauty, her glorious brown hair, the fleshy protrusion of her upper lip, her T-shirt twisted appealingly across her breasts. His heart begins to pound. She has squandered her beauty, he thinks. He does not know what will happen between them now. But no matter how much he rationalizes what she did, and he does rationalize it, no matter how much he tries to talk himself into hating her, he finds himself loving her more. His love for her is ripe in his mouth. The fruit has rotted perhaps, but he refuses to spit it out. With routine compassion he picks up the book at her side and sets it on the nightstand. For a moment he stands there, half-expecting her to wake, almost hoping that she will. Not to fight anymore, but to find each other inside a single, wordless moment. To find each other and remember what brought them both there in the first place, and why neither has left. But it’s too late for that, and she doesn’t wake, and they’re paging him again. He writes her a note, GOT PAGED, and leans it against the base of the lamp, where she will find it in the morning. Then he switches off the light and steps into the hall, listening to the yearning silence of the big house. It makes him think of his kids and he looks in on them now before he goes. First comes Henry, his ten-year-old son, sprawled across the mattress amid blankets and toys and forgotten stuffed animals. The boy’s hamster, Harpo, spins obsessively in its cage and for a moment Michael just stands there, contemplating the creature’s useless exertion. In the room next door, Rosie, who is six, sleeps with perfect stillness, maintaining the meticulous hierarchical positioning of her dolls at the end of her bed. Michael can’t imagine loving anything more than his children and feels a pang of guilt because he rarely sees them. Quality time, that’s what he’s resorted to. All part of the failed equation, he thinks, heading down the crooked stairs of the old house and out into the cold night, where it has begun to snow again. The flakes are thick and white like the feathers of birds. He takes a moment to zipper his jacket, to pull on his hood. The night is quiet, the sound of snowfall a comfort somehow, and he pushes himself on, cursing himself for wasting time.

The Saab starts with a lusty roar that makes him grateful that he owns a good car, even though he does not consider himself a man of attachments or possessions. The car smells of leather and promise and his own pathetic gratitude and it comes to him that he’s been a fool in his marriage, that what came between him and Annie is his own goddamn fault. It’s about him, not her, he realizes. It’s about everything he’s not.

Angry now, he pulls out of the driveway and speeds down the road, blowing past the squad car parked on the corner. Ever since he delivered the sheriff’s babies none of the cops pull him over for speeding. They know people are waiting for him, people in pain, and they respect that. One of the benefits of living in a small town like High Meadow, he thinks, gunning the engine, winding down the hill past Slattery’s cow farm, the fields dark and dense and silent, veiled in a dusting of fresh snow. Too early in the season for snow, he thinks, just a couple of weeks shy of Thanksgiving, but the weather is always unpredictable in upstate New York, and after all these years he’s no stranger to it. Ordinarily in weather like this he’d take Route 17 down to Bunker Hill, but he’s worried about the girl in the ER and decides to take Valley Road instead to save time. Under ideal circumstances the shortcut is dangerous, complicated with tight, snakelike turns, but it takes fifteen minutes off the trip. Tonight Valley Road shimmers with ice. The naked trees seem to tremble in his headlights. The sleet comes out of the dark like millions of pins and he is forced to decelerate, taking the curves slowly, methodically. The suffering girl will have to wait, he tells himself; nothing he can do about it now. At the end of Valley Road he turns onto Route 20, streaming into a line of traffic behind a behemoth snowplow, then onto the interstate, the city of Albany like a white blur before him.

Downtown, the streets are deserted except for a few homeless stragglers. The green neon cross on St. Vincent’s Hospital blinks and buzzes like some divine Morse code. Only now, as he pulls through the mammoth jaws of the doctors’ parking garage and climbs the labyrinth of concrete to his spot on level four, does it occur to him that something may be amiss. That perhaps the phone call had been a hoax: the bleeding girl, Finney being sick. Now that he thinks about it, he hadn’t recognized the nurse’s voice and he knows all the nurses at St. Vincent’s. The garage is deserted. The hanging fluorescent lights move in the wind, squealing slightly on their hinges. He knows he’s paranoid-Comes with the territory, they’d told him when he’d first started at the clinic, and he’d been more than willing to accept that, but now, tonight, he senses danger and he hesitates getting out of the car at all. He looks up at the glass doors a hundred feet away, where a nurse passes by in her pink scrubs, and the sense of routine comforts him. His beeper sounds again-I’m coming, hold your fucking horses-and he grabs his bag and opens the door and they’re on him, three or four or even five men, dragging him across the concrete into the dark. Cursing him, shoving him, laughing a little with their raised fists, taking turns splitting open his face, pushing him from one man’s arms into another’s. A greasy terror sloshes through his head. And then he’s down on his knees, someone throttling him, wrapping a cord around his neck, and as the air leaves his body like a pierced balloon he wonders if they are finally going to kill him. The fat one speaks in a cold, even voice, sweat splashing off his lips: “We’ve had enough, Dr. Knowles, we’ve had enough of your bullshit,” and then a shock of pain in his balls, excruciating and dense, and he doubles over and pukes-and he is glad for a moment, puking, because he thinks they will leave him alone, but they don’t, they kick him again, and again, and he is down on all fours like a dog amid chewing-gum wrappers and cigarette butts and shattered glass and his own puke and he suddenly begins to cry. Where is the guard, he wonders now-why hasn’t anyone seen them, some nurse, some technician, some doctor? Why isn’t someone calling the police?

“Let’s medicate the poor bastard.” Someone yanks back his head and pries open his mouth, dropping in pills. He doesn’t swallow, but then he gags and chokes and the bitter powder burns his throat. Water comes next, and more pills, and he can’t breathe. Surrender, he tells himself, you have no choice! His body lax as butter, everything blurred and slow and jangling with silence. I can’t fucking hear you! he thinks dully. Their big hands, quivering faces, mouths open in laughter. I can’t hear anything.

They put him in the trunk. The road vibrates under his head like a jackhammer. For the moment he is relieved to be left alone; he is relieved to be alive. And then it comes to him, suddenly, vividly, that he is going to die.

For months he has waited for this moment, feared it, and now that it is here, finally, now that it is happening to him, yes, to him, it is all the terror he imagined and worse.

Snowflakes on his face. The sky is kissing you, Daddy, he hears his daughter whispering. The men are talking but he cannot make out a word of it. He feels the prick of a needle, the warm drug rushing through him, bringing a taste into his mouth, cotton candy, and a feeling throughout his limbs that is not entirely unpleasant. The men smell of whiskey and triumph as they grip his body and pull him out of the dark place. Staggering with his weight, they bring him in their arms to a car and they put him into it, behind the wheel. Even in his dementia he knows it’s his own car, he recognizes the smell, Rosie’s paddock boots in the back, Henry’s chocolate bars for Cub Scouts, and they strap him in and turn the key and the engine screams. He wants to tell them that he can’t see, he’s in no shape to drive, but his mouth won’t work, his tongue is too big, and now the car is moving, it floats for a moment in midair, then tumbles through the dark like a clumsy animal. Suddenly he understands what they have done and he doesn’t care, really, it doesn’t matter anymore, and he forgets it, he forgives them all their stupidity, and he can only remember her face, her beautiful mouth. Annie! He screams inside his head. He is screaming and screaming. Annie!

READING GROUP GUIDE

Discussion guide.

WARNING! Questions here contain plot spoilers. Don’t read the questions until you’ve read the book.

1) The thriller plot of The Doctor’s Wife deals with violence against doctors who perform abortions. How did your own views about abortion affect your reading of the book?

2) Although the thriller plot focuses on the doctor, Michael Knowles, the title suggests the most important character is his wife Annie. Why?

3) Annie’s affair with Simon is sure to press as many hot buttons as her husband’s work in the women’s clinic. How did you feel about the affair? Was it “justified”?

4) Lydia’s religious beliefs are exploited by a “reverend” with a political agenda. Who’s responsible for her actions — Lydia, Reverend Tim, or both?

5) Mothers beam when their daughters marry doctors, but Annie is disappointed in Michael precisely because he is a doctor. Medicine, she believes, has turned him into a “weary, densitized workaholic.” That could be a description of many professional men. Would it be better if those men married women in their professions?

6) “They had come to a place in their marriage when they were blind to one another, and it was mutual.” How does this change for Annie and Michael over the course of the book? What do you think happens to Michael and Annie?

7) Simon teaches Annie’s class one day, and delivers a lecture — directed at his wife — about black-and-white. “Gray is where you want to go, but it’s difficult,” he says. In reading this book, do you feel the author prodding you to see life in its complexity, as shades of gray? Or is that a rationalization people adopt when, say, they’re having affairs?

8) How do Simon Haas’ paintings of Lydia reveal how he views women? Does this view change when he gets to know Annie?

9) How do you visualize Simon’s work? What painter’s work do you see?

10) Which character, if any, were you sympathetic towards? Why?

11) Talk about the theme of guilt that runs through the book. Annie is guilty about her affair with Simon. Michael is guilty about his relationship with Celina. Simon is guilty about his life with Lydia. Lydia is guilty about murdering her father. What does this guilt do to the characters?

12) When you first started reading this book did you expect that the story would take the twists and turns that it did? What surprised you most?

Essaying the pop culture that matters since 1999

The Doctor’s Wife by Elizabeth Brundage

Nothing just happens! You thought about it. You made a decision. Whatever happened to self-control? — Lydia Haas, The Doctor’s Wife

Some writers make the thrilling substantial. Others make the substantial thrilling. In her debut novel, Elizabeth Brundage merely stops to soil the playing field. Hinged on the attempted murder of an abortion provider, The Doctor’s Wife holds great promise on two accounts: as an engaging page-turner, and as an illuminating comment on personal choice in America. But despite a plot rooted in one of the most divisive issues of the heartland, Brundage sows little more than a juicy, cataclysmic story that succeeds only because you can never manage to put it down.

In typical thriller fashion, the opening scene is a kicker. Dr. Michael Knowles, a keen young obstetrician in upstate New York, answers his beeper in the middle of the night. Expecting it to be a mistake, he is surprised to hear they need him at the hospital. Over-worked but wed to his profession, he is forever on watch for another patient (or any woman, but his wife, for that matter) to save. It is what keeps him going. It is what has recently driven him to volunteer at an abortion clinic. It is what leads him to respond to a suspicious page in the middle of the night … but will it be his last?

The Doctor’s Wife is notable for its hook. Most often when abortion is written about, it’s within the boundaries of a few familiar domains: legislative updates, health policy reports, religious propaganda, or newspaper stories about the impact of judicial nominees. It is rare to read a novel concerned with the intersection between two characters who have made life-altering choices: the one by Dr. Knowles to perform abortions, and the other by a religious fanatic to perpetrate violence against him. As it stands, one of the greatest threats to reproductive choice in the United States is the lack of abortion providers. And as the wife of a doctor who trained in environs akin to those where real-life abortion provider Dr. Barnett Slepian was murdered in 1998, Brundage knows the terrain well.

So it is with this verisimilitude that we race from an assassination attempt into a well-conceived denouement. As it turns out, Dr. Knowles’ troubles are not isolated to attempts on his life. Annie Knowles is growing disillusioned with her creative writing professorship and increasingly bored with being “the doctor’s wife.” She has started spending a lot of time at seedy motels with painter Simon Haas, whose wife, Lydia, is occupied with her own religio-maniacal fits and starts. And when the Knowles begin receiving anonymous threats it is clear that the two couples are more involved than it seemed.

Told from the alternating viewpoints of Michael, Annie, Simon, and Lydia, The Doctor’s Wife is full of characters making desperate choices about how to live their lives. Suspenseful, provocative, and imminently readable, it is a classic page-turner with a captivating thriller plot. So while at times the characters feel like they are flip-flopping between being shadows and caricatures of themselves, it is impossible to leave them for too long without wondering what is going to happen next.

The problem is that the story opts to focus on the least interesting character of the tetrad. As the title tells us clearly, the story is less about Dr. Knowles’ career choice than his wife’s bedroom behavior — and this is where the book goes wrong. Focusing too many words on the adulterous (and comparatively drab) relationship between Annie and Simon, The Doctor’s Wife weakens at the seams as it goes on, venturing too closely to romantic fiction than moral thriller.

Ultimately by turns both fascinating and flimsy, this book is an uneven affair. So if your summer book club favors psychological thrillers that slip on Freud more than they challenge him, be pleased that The Doctor’s Wife is now available in paperback. For the rest of us that savor something denser, keep licking your lips.

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Academy of New Zealand Literature

The Doctor’s Wife by Fiona Sussman

THE WEDNESDAY REVIEW

Bateman Books

ISBN: 9781776890439 Published: October 2022 Pages: 304 Format: Paperback

Reviewed by rebecca hill .

The Doctor’s Wife , Fiona Sussman’s fourth novel, is a murder story set on Auckland’s North Shore. Sussman is no stranger to crime writing: her novel The Last Time We Spoke — a gritty exploration of rural violence and prison life — won the 2017 Ngaio Marsh Award.

This new book seems a world away from the farmstead at the heart of The Last Time We Spoke . Stan, Carmen, Austin and Tibbie are middle-aged, middle-class friends whose lives in Browns Bay are fraught with the usual mid-life complications — infidelity, worries about money, jealousy. One couple is wealthy but unable to have children, while the other has teenage sons but far less income. They meet up to eat dinners that feature a ‘pear and blue cheese starter with toasted walnuts on top,’ with ‘the men talking cars, and Carmen commenting like a true journalist on some parliamentary gaffe.’

Austin is a doctor: he and his elegant wife Tibbie have been close with Carmen for over 30 years, since they were teenagers, ‘ Friends forever  scrawled in their high-school leaving book’. Carmen’s husband, Stan, is ‘a rather late addition to an already tight’ group and regarded for some time as an unwelcome disruption. Austin, in particular, does not like disruptions, in part because he struggles with memories of a traumatic upbringing: ‘Was this going to be his forever school or would his mum and her new squeeze pack up sticks and move town again?’

For the past twenty-four years Stan has remained at Carmen’s side, as a genial and ‘pretty consistent’ presence. Austin sees him as an ‘agreeable coaster. Not easily riled. Not easily enthused.’ Stan seems to be a ‘man without ambition or agenda’ — unlike the more tightly wound Austin, who dresses in a uniform of ‘business shirt and chinos’, all prim perfectionism. Stan eats lasagne in front of the TV and wears a T-shirt and jeans to his job teaching art, clothing choices that make Austin ‘feel itchy and unsettled’. Success in life, Austin believes, is ‘about playing the part, about actively shaping each day.  Live the life you aspire to achieve .’

Life and death, not simply contrasting ways of living, form the novel’s initial lines of tension. After the ‘abstract diagnosis of brain cancer’, Carmen is very unwell and Stan feels as though their life together is disintegrating. For the first time he sees what judgy Austin sees: a rundown house and chaotic garden. ‘Leggy blades of grass licked mould-blackened bricks. The unravelling went on — a listing letterbox, dead-dry hydrangeas, sagging roof guttering, the cracked porch tiles.’ Their house mirrors Carmen’s physical decline. Reuben, one of their sons, describes his mother’s formerly pixie-ish face as ‘puffy and spongy like bread dough’, and ‘her Halle Berry hair [now] … a crazy paving of pale scalp and prickly brown bristles.’

The changes are not only physical. Tibbie, believing she is ‘going to lose her best friend’, starts to feel ‘strangely alone in the friendship. As if all the little changes that had crept into their relationship over the past months were kept on a running tab, and now, out of the blue, had been tallied.’

But the novel’s domestic drama takes a much more sinister turn when a woman’s body is found at the bottom of a cliff. The dead woman is the doctor’s wife of the book’s title — Tibbie, not Carmen — and the story becomes a police procedural. The novel employs multiple points of view, deftly handled, and the necessary switch halfway through to the perspective of detective Ramesh Bandara will please readers looking for a classic, whodunnit-style mystery. Connections build between the disparate perspectives and our suspicions move from one character to the other.

Sussman was a doctor before she was a novelist and is able to draw on this expertise for the medical aspects of the story: this lends weight to the key story of one character’s cancer diagnosis, which may otherwise have felt gimmicky. However, when faced with the task of sustaining an entire novel based on the central mystery, the author fills chapters with an excess of description rather than deeper character development — so much detail that readers may think they’re vital clues. We know that Austin is meticulous, but this characterisation starts to feel one-note when we’re told he ‘ran the dirty dishes under hot water, then packed the dishwasher — knives on the top shelf, forks facing down in the cutlery basket, big plates at the back, side plates to the front.’ Is this just more dogged showing-not-telling, or a crucial clue to some dishwasher-related element of the murder?

It’s hard to know in a novel that is sometimes over-written — a pōhutukawa is ‘denuded of its crimson blooms’ — and employs similes to excess. Parts of Ramesh’s point-of-view sections are a cliché pile-up: ‘It was easy to get blinkered in the job, especially when on the home straight. And even more so after thinking you’d crossed the finish line.’ This is frustrating in an otherwise readable novel with an intriguing plot.

Eliot, one of Austin’s patients, is a young autistic man who discovers Tibbie — ‘the dead lady with long red hair’ — and is traumatised. His point of view is plausible and particular: to Eliot, one of the joggers near the cliff looks ‘quite a lot like Mr Roy, his former woodwork teacher — Golden Retriever eyes and ears like big, kind commas.’ But in common with a number of the characters in the novel, Eliot is a familiar trope: the loner with a heart of gold who doesn’t know his own strength.

Another character who may feel over-familiar to crime readers is Ramesh, the struggling detective, who has just been through a divorce. After anxiety-related sick leave, he is pursuing the case (of course) against the boss’s wishes, desperate to prove himself. At one point, Sussman even seems to be winking at us via the police chief: ‘This is not some cosy murder mystery, Bandara, where the least likely person in the village turns out to be the culprit … You’ve got the quirky young lad with a supposedly superhuman memory. The woman with a brain tumour. Now, her financially strained husband. Soon the whole damned city will be under suspicion. You’re all over the show, man. Give me something concrete.’

By the time the novel reveals its second death, the story feels as though it’s winding down. When the perspective switches to Ramesh — to avoid revelations from our cast of suspects — readers have to wait for the detective to figure out as much as we already know. The pace suffers, and so does the tension.

Still, seasoned crime readers who enjoy distinguishing clue from red herring will consider this a solid attempt at a classic psychological thriller. Despite its clunky moments, The Doctor’s Wife tells a compelling story set in a recognisable Auckland, and Sussman’s twisting-and-turning plot demonstrates her respect for the crime genre.

Rebecca Hill   is a New Zealand writer and translator living in Berlin.

'Character to some extent is much a construction of the reader as it is of the writer.' - Lloyd Jones

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The Doctor's Wife

The Doctor's Wife by Elizabeth Brundage

• Publication Date: November 29, 2005
• Genres: Fiction , Thriller
• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Plume
• ISBN-10: 0452286913
• ISBN-13: 9780452286917
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Brian Moore's unhappy women appear in varying strengths and weaknesses and he has written signally better about them than...

READ REVIEW

THE DOCTOR'S WIFE

by Brian Moore ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1976

Brian Moore's unhappy women appear in varying strengths and weaknesses and he has written signally better about them than most men--a recurrent observation. Time will probably never subdue Judith Hearne while Mary Dunne was only retrieved temporarily from her own ineffectuality with momentary insights. But what of the doctor's wife, Sheila Redden of Belfast, just as respectable as her last year's Donald Davies dress? She cannot save herself and Moore does little to amplify her ordinariness. She goes to Paris and Nice on the assumption that her husband will join her but he's detained. Meanwhile with more urgent sex than she has ever known, she has an affair with a much too young American, Tom. Days later she has another kind of nocturnal experience in which she flirts with the void. Although she gave up her faith years ago, she talks with a priest, finally decides that she must be her own state of grace. And so--refusing to go to America with Tom, abandoning her husband and youngster--she summarily turns her back on all that was, isolating herself in a smaller void. Moore, you'll remember, specializes in limbos of one kind or another. But somehow the unarticulated decision of this once sensible, now vagrant woman, lacks conviction particularly since all the other externals belong to the glossier knowns of women's fiction--comparable to Mary Dunne's. It's for those other women who stay home to read rather than wander off like the doctor's wife toward a lonelier uncertainty.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1976

Page Count: -

Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1976

Categories: FICTION

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The Doctor's Wife: An absolutely gripping and unputdownable psychological thriller with a shocking twist Kindle Edition

• Book 1 of 4 The Doctor's Wife
• Print length 256 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publication date 31 Jan. 2023
• File size 1093 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
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Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BPJK765G
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bookouture (31 Jan. 2023)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 1093 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
• 10 in Psychological Fiction (Kindle Store)
• 11 in Psychological Fiction (Books)
• 26 in Psychological Thrillers (Kindle Store)

About the author

Daniel hurst.

Daniel Hurst is an Amazon #1 bestselling author of fast paced psychological thrillers. His most popular titles include Til Death Do Us Part, The Passenger and The Doctor's Wife, the latter title reaching #1 on the Amazon UK Kindle store in February 2023. A regular KDP Select All Star since he became a full-time author in 2021, Daniel prides himself on writing fast, releasing stories often and engaging with his readers.

You can visit him at www.danielhurstbooks.com, where you can also download a copy of his FREE thriller 'Just One Second.'

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My very own website yikes, the doctor’s wife, by daniel hurst.

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Drew and Fern move to the small village of Arberness to get away from the pressure of city living. But Drew has been having an affair and has followed his lover in order to rekindle their romance. Can he keep the secret from his wife…?

The doctor’s wife is a psychological thriller set in the north of england., fern has given her husband a second chance but he doesn’t even know it. she is fully aware of his affair yet is hoping their marriage will survive. he is blissfully ignorant that she knows the truth, believing that he can fool her. neither of the main characters is particularly pleasant, both being ruthless and devious., most of the book is written in the present day but there are some chapters from the past. the first person narrative swaps between fern and drew in the first half of the book so we see the secrets they are each keeping from the other. i loved the dual narrative for showing the contrasting perspectives and opinions on the same scenarios., this is quite a quick read and i couldn’t put it down. i was completely swept up in the characters’ lives. i did feel that the final twist in the epilogue was perhaps one too far and stretched my credulity, however it was clever., the doctor’s wife was a gripping and twisty novel about secrets and lies., i have previously read other books by daniel hurst including the accident , and the break ., the doctor’s wife: an absolutely gripping and unputdownable psychological thriller with a shocking twist, he thinks his secret is safe. but she knows the truth…, my husband is a doctor. he’s smart and charming and everybody trusts him.  except me., on the surface, it looks like i have it all – the perfect marriage, the perfect husband, the perfect life. but it’s far from the truth., doctor drew devlin  is not the respectable figure he makes out to be. the reason we moved to this beautiful, old property with a gorgeous view of the sea was because we needed to put our past behind us. it should’ve been a fresh start for us both., except i’ve discovered my husband has been lying to me again. he’s using the power he has in his job to mess with people’s lives, and to get exactly what he wants – no matter who it hurts., but he’s underestimated me. i’ve had plenty of time, in this big, isolated house, to think about all of his mistakes., and my husband has no idea what’s about to happen next…, from the number one bestselling author of  the passenger , an absolutely gripping psychological thriller packed with jaw-dropping twists that will keep you reading late into the night. if you love  behind closed doors ,  gone girl  and  the housemaid , you’ll be hooked on  the doctor’s wife ., buy link:  https://geni.us/b0bpjk765gsocial, about daniel hurst, daniel hurst writes psychological thrillers and loves to tell tales about unusual things happening to normal people. he has written all his life, making the progression from handing scribbled stories to his parents as a boy to writing full length novels in his thirties. he lives in the north west of england, returning to his roots after several years away exploring the world and garnering plenty of ideas for future books, social media,   instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/danielhurstbooks/, twitter:  https://twitter.com/dhurstbooks, website:  www.danielhurstbooks.com, author newsletter sign up:  https://www.bookouture.com/daniel-hurst/.

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Kristen's Book Korner

Book Review: The Doctor’s Wife

Book: The Doctor’s Wife

Author: Daniel Hurst

Thank you NetGalley and Bookouture Audio for an advanced audio copy.

After reading the summary and then seeing how The Doctor’s Wife began I had low expectations. It seemed like they put everything out there way too soon. I thought it was going to be predictable and boring. I could not have been more wrong.

Fern knows her husband Drew’s secret. He is having an affair. Drew even asks Fern to move so he can be closer to his mistress. Fern knowing what is going on still agrees to move with him. She had a plan in place and it was a plan I was not ready for. 

The book starts a little slow, with a lot of explaining what we already know. Once it gets going, it does not stop until you close the book. 

I do not want to discuss anything specific to the story. It was so good and unexpected you just have to experience it. Without any spoilers, there were two main parts that really blew me away. One was the ending. No way you will see that coming. The other was a “wink”. If you read the book you will know what I’m talking about, when that happened I yelled at the book.

The Doctor’s Wife is a book you will not want to miss!

Final Score: 5/5

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Politics latest: Ex-Tory chancellor to stand down - and nods to Shakespeare in flamboyant announcement

Nadhim Zahawi, the MP for Stratford-on-Avon, has confirmed he will not be standing at the next general election. This takes the number of Conservatives who have announced they are stepping aside to at least 64.

Thursday 9 May 2024 08:06, UK

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• 'Parting is such sweet sorrow': Zahawi to stand down at election
• Read his statement in full
• Starmer facing backlash from MPs after Elphicke defects to Labour
• Explained:  Who is  Natalie Elphicke?
• Sam Coates: More defections possible - but some Labour nerves too
• Cameron calls for NATO to set 2.5% defence spending target
• Live reporting by Faith Ridler

Over a year ago, Rishi Sunak made five pledges for voters to judge him on.

The prime minister met his promise to halve inflation by the end of 2023.

But with the general election approaching, how is Mr Sunak doing on delivering his other promises?

You can see the progress for yourself below:

The conversation with Gillian Keegan now turns to the defection of ex-Conservative MP Natalie Elphicke, who yesterday joined the Labour party.

"I can't understand defections," the education secretary says.

"You should take your politics seriously. You think very clearly about what you think and then you back a party and then you deliver. That's what you have to do. 

"The British public are not interested in student political games."

She adds: "They need to be able to trust people and they need to trust people A) to say what they think and B) to deliver what they say. 

"What we're doing is just focusing on delivering the plans."

Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, has admitted there is "always a fear" that the violent, pro-Palestine demonstrations seen at universities in the US could spread to the UK.

Jewish students have said they face a "toxic" environment as a growing number of Pro-Palestine encampments are set up at universities in response to the Israel-Hamas conflict.

While there has not been violent scenes like those seen in the US, the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) has warned the rhetoric emanating from these encampments "is increasing in hostility" - and called on university leaders to do more to keep Jewish students safe.

Rishi Sunak is today meeting with university bosses in Downing Street, and he will call on them to take a "zero tolerance" approach to antisemitism.

But what is he trying to achieve?

"What we want to do is we want to sort of work together to show leadership on this issue," she said.

"What we don't want is our campuses becoming unsafe environments for students or staff and going down the route that you see in other places like the US. 

"We're very keen to show leadership to stamp out any and share best practices. You know, universities are trying to tackle this. It's not an easy thing to tackle. We do accept that. But if we can work together to show clear leadership and protect most of all Jewish staff and Jewish people."

She is asked if there is a fear the protests in the US could be replicated here, and admits: "There's always a fear of that. You know, there's always a contagion fear. 

"And obviously there are some groups that, you know, are encouraging this as well. So there is always that fear.

"What we want to do is make sure, no, absolutely not. Our universities, our campuses, they obviously are places where you debate. Where you share views. 

"You don't obviously have to agree, but they have to be respectful and they certainly have to be respectful and safe places for all students."

As we have just reported, Nadhim Zahawi has just confirmed he will be stepping aside as the MP for Stratford-on-Avon at the next general election.

Here's his statement in full:

"With the exception of convincing my wife to marry me, it has been the greatest honour of my life to represent the people of Stratford-on-Avon and serve as a Minister of the Crown. But after 14 years in Parliament, and multiple roles in Cabinet and Government, I have come to the decision not to stand again at the next general election.

"Every morning as I shave my head in the mirror, I have to pinch myself. How is it that a boy from Baghdad who came to these shores, fleeing persecution and unable to speak a word of English, was able to do as much as I have? For all our challenges, this is the best country on Earth, and it helped me make my British dream come true. It was where I built a Great British business, YouGov, and it was where I raised my wonderful family. And it was the nation to which I was proud to return such a favour when I led the world-leading coronavirus vaccination rollout.

"I feel immensely privileged to have been called upon to serve my country across government. As education secretary I kept schools open during Omicron, and as chancellor of the Exchequer, I ensured Ukraine's valiant efforts against Russia were properly supported. I was also given the unique responsibility of coordinating the funeral commemorations for our beloved Queen Elizabeth II. I was also proud to become chairman of the Conservative Party to which I have belonged for most of my adult life, first as a councillor and then as an MP, and to have become Patron of the Adam Smith Institute.

"But serving the constituents of Stratford-on-Avon is the most important work I have done as a Member of Parliament. Whether they are struggling against the dead hand of bureaucracy, or are stricken by tragedy, being able to help them in their time of need remains one of the most meaningful things I have ever done. I am proud that my constituents felt able to confide in me. I was able to do this thanks to my amazing association chairman, Lynda Organ, her association officers, my election agent Jill Simpson-Vince, and the rest of the local team who work so hard, and who form a shining example of Burke's little platoons.

"But as my most famous constituent once wrote: "Go to your bosom, knock there and ask your heart what it doth know I have come to feel that the time is right for a new, energetic Conservative to fight for the honour of representing Stratford-on-Avon and assuming the mantle of MP for Shakespeare. I will, of course, serve my constituents with dedication and determination until then, and the prime minister, and the Conservative Party, will continue to have my unswerving support into and beyond the next general election.

"Parting is such sweet sorrow. I would like to thank all of my parliamentary staff and colleagues, civil service officials, special advisers, and everyone the who has ever given me advice, praise, or kept me in check with criticism. My mistakes have been mine, and my successes have come from working with, and leading, amazing people. I am most grateful of all for the love of my family and friends, especially Lana."

Nadhim Zahawi, the MP for Stratford-on-Avon, has confirmed he will not be standing at the next general election.

This takes the number of Conservatives that have announced they are stepping aside to 64.

Mr Zahawi, who was responsible for the COVID vaccine roll-out and was briefly chancellor between July and September 2022, said it was the "greatest honour of his life" to represent the people of Stratford-on-Avon.

He quoted his most famous constituent of past - William Shakespeare - saying: "Parting is such sweet sorrow."

Mr Zahawi added: "Every morning as I shave my head in the mirror, I have to pinch myself.

"How is it that a boy from Baghdad who came to these shores, fleeing persecution and unable to speak a word of English, was able to do as much as I have?

"For all our challenges, this is the best country on Earth, and it helped me make my British dream come true."

By Faye Brown , political reporter

Rishi Sunak will meet with university bosses in Downing Street on Thursday to call on them to take a "zero tolerance" approach to antisemitism.

The prime minister has invited vice-chancellors of leading universities for a meeting to address the rise in antisemitic abuse on campus and disruption to students' learning.

While there has not been violent scenes like those seen in the US, the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) has warned the rhetoric emanating from these encampments "is increasing in hostility" - and called on university leaders to do more to keep Jewish students safe.

You can read more from Sky News below: 

It has been less than two years since Labour's shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves told Tory MP Natalie Elphicke to "f*** off" for criticising Marcus Rashford at the Euros.

Now they are colleagues.

Ms Elphicke crossed the floor of the House of Commons to join Labour ahead of Prime Minister's Questions, causing a stir on both sides of the House.

The Dover MP has long been critical of the Labour Party - especially on immigration - but she now says the party has "changed out of all recognition" and is trying to create "a Britain everyone can be a part of".

Ms Elphicke added that the Conservatives "ousted" Boris Johnson in a "coup led by the unelected Rishi Sunak" - with the party now a "byword for incompetence and division".

So who is Natalie Elphicke, what are her policies, and why did she defect?

Our political reporter Tim Baker explains...

NATO countries should agree at an upcoming summit in Washington to spend 2.5% of GDP on defence, Lord Cameron will urge later today.

In his first major speech as foreign secretary, the minister will call on Britain and its allies to "out-compete, out-cooperate and out-innovate" their adversaries in an ongoing "battle of wills".

Lord Cameron will say July's summit "must see all allies on track" to meet the commitment set out in 2014 to spend 2% of GDP on defence, and then "move quickly to establish 2.5% as the new benchmark for all NATO allies".

According to NATO, two-thirds of the alliance's 32 members are expected to meet or exceed the 2% target in 2024, up from 11 in 2023.

Last year only five NATO states, Poland, the US, Greece, Estonia and Lithuania, spent more than 2.5% of their GDP on defence, something the UK has pledged to do by the end of the decade.

In his speech, Lord Cameron is also expected to criticise some of Britain's allies for not doing enough on defence, saying NATO needs to "adopt a harder edge for a tougher world".

He will say: "If Putin's illegal invasion teaches us anything, it must be that doing too little, too late, only spurs an aggressor on.

"I see too many examples in this job of this lesson not having been learnt.

"Take the Red Sea, where ship after ship has been attacked. While many countries have criticised the Houthi attacks, it is only the US and Britain that have been willing and able to step up and strike back at them."

Sir Keir Starmer's decision to welcome Tory defector Natalie Elphicke to the Labour Party has raised a few eyebrows, with one Labour MP describing the move as "utterly disgraceful".

Ms Elphicke quit the Conservatives just moments before Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday, hitting out at Rishi Sunak's "tired and chaotic government" and accusing the prime minister of failing to deliver on his promise to "stop the boats".

But her debut as a Labour MP has not been welcomed by all of her new colleagues, with some raising concerns about comments she made after her then husband was convicted of sexual assault.

One Labour MP said: "I think it's utterly disgraceful.

"She's totally right-wing and supported her husband when he sexually assaulted women.

"There are Labour MPs still suspended and we're welcoming MPs who have voted to push people into poverty. I despair."

Another MP said she had been left in tears by the news of Ms Elphicke's defection.

Ms Elphicke's former husband and predecessor as MP for Dover, Charlie Elphicke, was convicted in 2020 of sexually assaulting two women and sentenced to two years in prison.

Although she ended the marriage after his conviction, Ms Elphicke supported his unsuccessful appeal and described the verdict as "a terrible miscarriage of justice", saying Elphicke had been "attractive, and attracted to women" and "an easy target for dirty politics and false allegations".

She was subsequently suspended from the Commons for one day alongside two other MPs after trying to influence a judge who was deciding whether to release character references they had written for Elphicke.

Jess Phillips, the former shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding, said Ms Elphicke should "account for her actions".

She told ITV's Peston: "I'm all for forgiveness but I do think that that needs some explaining."

Good morning!

Welcome back to the Politics Hub  on Thursday, 9 May.

Here's what you need to know:

• Fallout will likely continue after ex-Conservative MP Natalie Elphicke crossed the floor of the House yesterday, defecting to Labour;
• She is the second Tory member to do so this year, after the MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich  Dan Poulter switched to Sir Keir Starmer's party at the end of last month;
• The news was met with mixed reactions on both sides, with former leader of the Labour party Neil Kinnock yesterday urging the party to be "choosy" about who it admits to its ranks;
• Rishi Sunak will meet with university bosses in Downing Street today to call on them to take a "zero tolerance" approach to antisemitism;
• And Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron will call for a "harder edge for a tougher world" in a major speech at the National Cyber Security Centre today;
• It will also be Scottish First Minister John Swinney 's debut First Minister's Questions at noon.

We'll be discussing all of this and more with:

• Education Secretary Gillian Keegan at 7.15am;
• Labour chair Anneliese Dodds at 8.15am.

Follow along for all the latest news and analysis throughout today.

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The Doctor's Wife: An absolutely gripping and unputdownable psychological thriller with a shocking twist Paperback – January 26, 2023

Purchase options and add-ons.

• Book 1 of 4 The Doctor's Wife
• Print length 254 pages
• Language English
• Publication date January 26, 2023
• Dimensions 5.06 x 0.64 x 7.81 inches
• ISBN-10 1803149418
• ISBN-13 978-1803149417
• See all details

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Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bookouture (January 26, 2023)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 254 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1803149418
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1803149417
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.2 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.06 x 0.64 x 7.81 inches
• #181 in Psychological Fiction (Books)
• #658 in Psychological Thrillers (Books)
• #1,102 in Suspense Thrillers

About the author

Daniel hurst.

Daniel Hurst is an Amazon #1 bestselling author of fast paced psychological thrillers. His most popular titles include Til Death Do Us Part, The Passenger and The Doctor's Wife, the latter title reaching #1 on the Amazon UK Kindle store in February 2023. A regular KDP Select All Star since he became a full-time author in 2021, Daniel prides himself on writing fast, releasing stories often and engaging with his readers.

You can visit him at www.danielhurstbooks.com, where you can also download a copy of his FREE thriller 'Just One Second.'

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