The Serial Killer's Wife by Alice Hunter (Part 1)
I've finished it in just a few hours, it's a quick read; easy to follow along, considering there are at least three narratives we hear from throughout the book and two separate dates! Such a wonder to read for something I found at a car boot sale for something silly like 50p.
Before we get elbow-deep into this novel, let's take a look at the author first. She has a degree in psychology and went on to be an interventions facilitator in a prison. Doing this, she came into contact with serious offenders who had committed a variety of crimes. She'd previously been a nurse in the NHS, and she uses her wealth of knowledge on criminal minds and psychology in order to bring us works of art like The Serial Killer's Wife.
Awesome side note: during my research into Alice Hunter, I've found she's also written The Serial Killer's Daughter and The Serial Killer's Sister; I don't think I've read anything of Alice Hunter's before, but I certainly will be keeping my eye out for her other novels.
That being said, let's get into the meat and potatoes of this book - it begins with the inner monologue of our main character, a mother and wife named Beth, being paid a visit at her country cottage in Lower Tew, England, by the police. They want to speak to her husband, Tom, in connection to a murder enquiry. Shocked, Beth doesn't know where Tom is as he's unusually late back from work, but he does eventually arrive and is escorted to the local police station, questioned and returned in the same night. During his informal chat with the police is when we first hear from him through his own inner monologue; he is shocked by this murder enquiry, wondering how he fits into it at all. It's a short chapter, letting us readers assume we will be hearing from Tom in the future.
Beth obviously has questions (wouldn't we all, if in Beth's place?) but Tom puts them off, telling her he will talk about everything tomorrow as it's late when he's released (around midnight) however we are given a name to this murder victim: Katie, and both Tom and Beth appear to know of her. It seems Katie was a six-month long relationship Tom had some time before he met Beth. That crazy part is, Katie's body hasn't been found, it's only suspected that she's come to harm because she allegedly took off to India to teach yoga and hasn't been properly heard from since; Tom is looked at as the last person to see her before her disappearance.
The next morning goes as normal, Tom heads off for work and Beth drops their daughter, Poppy, at nursery, heading for Poppy's Place (a café Beth owns and manages, named after her daughter) and going about her day as usual. There's some tittering within the village about Tom's trip to the police station (which is to be expected in small villages where the folk have truly nothing better to do than gossip about one another) which drives Beth's anxiety up. Beth's baking is first mentioned here; it's her passion which she's mixed into the goings on of the café as well as pottery.
There is a small mention of a book club that Beth is trying to rekindle - apparently there was a book club with a group of 'yummy mummies' (her description, not mine!) in it's circle, lead by a woman named Camilla who had died some time ago. Beth runs a child's party that day in the café and this is where we are introduced to Camilla's window, Adam - a sweet, quiet man with a little girl named Jess, equally quiet and shy. There's a short interaction between Beth and Adam - very meet-cute-esque, then it's the end of the day. As Beth and Poppy are heading back home they find Tom's car with no Tom himself found inside the home. It seems the police carted him off for more questioning when he got back from work. Beth becomes more on edge with what's happening as she realises she has no-one to turn to or talk to. Tom had always told her they only ever needed each other, so she never tried making any friends - this was somewhat of a red flag to me as it's strange for your lover to try and convince you not to make friends because they believe they're all you need. I remember thinking, 'Is this the first nugget of a manipulative partner?'
We hear from Tom again, in the police station, now being held in custody. He is officially a suspect, so he hires a lawyer and the brief chapter ends with his disbelief at being a suspect in Katie's supposed murder, 'after all these years'. Goosebumps, after all, this book is titled The Serial Killer's Wife, so I assume Tom really has murdered Katie.
The next chapter took me by surprise as it's Katie's inner monologue from eight years ago, then a short excerpt from Tom (also from eight years ago), very intriguing! It's a short chapter from Katie about how she met Tom; how it seemed like fate when she saw him in her local gym, this gorgeous yet humble-looking man. She asked him out and that was all we got. Tom's bit explains that their meeting was anything but fate; he had seen her going to the gym several weeks earlier, had stalker her gym routine so he could orchestrate their meeting perfectly.
Back to Beth. It's the next day, Tom's been in custody overnight and she finds the morning newspaper suggesting that he's in connection with Katie's murder. Beth communicates with Maxwell (Tom's lawyer), freaking out that the papers know about this already, fearing for her daughter who's only three years old. The world doesn't stop spinning just because her husband is being held by the police and she's worried about how the village will look at her and Poppy, so she has to get on with her usual routine.
Katie appears again and it's somewhere into her relationship with Tom. Immediately she sounds annoyed because she has had yearly plans to celebrate May Day with her friends from university but Tom has a special surprise planned and manages to manipulate her into cancelling her plans. Tom even peers over her shoulder to see what she texts into her friends' group chat (big red flags are waving for me here), but once he gets up to grab a drink she manages to text her best friend in the group, Isaac, the truth that she wasn't happy about cancelling but Tom was pressuring her. She mentions that Isaac used to be the guy she confided everything in before Tom, but Tom has told her that he's all she will ever need again. Does that sound familiar? It seems Tom has a pattern of manipulating women and isolating them so he has them all to himself. Tom's half in this chapter is quite foreboding: he says he really does have a surprise planned, one that is going to show Katie's immature friends, 'just how things were going to be from here on in.' Yikes.
The next day, while she is dropping Poppy off at her nursery, Beth runs into the gossipy mothers who hang outside of the gates chatting every day. Beth decides she needs to connect with someone somehow, so she joins their circle of chatter and one woman amongst them seems to offer her actual condolences, Julia. They have a brief talk about what's happening in Beth's life and I think she's better for the socialising afterwards. Walking up the street to her home, Beth spots a fleet of police cars and finds out there's a warrant to search her home. There's nothing she can do; the warrant is in order and been approved. All she can do is wait.
Tom's next chapter is focused on his whereabouts on the day he was first released from the station. It seems that he did not in fact go to work. He wasn't spotted going his usual route to work and his boss had confirmed he'd called in sick, but Tom won't give up his whereabouts. The police attempt to rattle him by informing him of the house search, by which this time is already over - they've got his iPad, computer and apparently other important evidence - but Tom doesn't crack. He thinks he will go back to family bliss, 'if I keep level headed. If they don't find anything on my iPad. If they don't uncover the truth about where I was on Tuesday.'
Back to Beth - she's inside her house again and the police have made no effort to tidy up the mess they made going through every inch of the house. Anxiety and anger (directed at Tom) is flooding from her as her life is beginning to circle the drain before her eyes. She's paid a visit from Maxwell who tells her she needs to give an interview at the police station; he couches her through some likely questions and after leaving her, the reality of what's happening is further sinking into her mind. Beth is horrified at this thought of being the most gossiped-about person in the entire village. While going in a vicious mental circle, Adam appears at Beth's door. He offers her a shoulder to cry on and Beth invites him inside. He's clumsily charming, not asking for any details on Tom or the ongoing case but instead offering up some information on himself. We learn that his wife died from a severe anaphylaxis reaction; she became complacent with her nut allergy and didn't always check labels on food packaging. It was a terrible accident that left Adam widowed and little Jess without a mother. At the end of the chapter, Beth mentions she probably trusts Adam more than she trusts her husband right now.
Next up is Beth's interview with the same police officers that arrested her husband. She's still holding out hope that he will be released back home by that evening, but first she needs to make it through the interview. Questions about when Tom met Katie, what their relationship was like and what her own relationship with Tom was like were asked, and Beth gave what limited answers she knew about Katie in addition to letting the police know that Tom was gentle and a caring father, incapable of hurting anyone. The police clue Beth into the fact that Tom didn't go into work on Tuesday which shocks her as she is used to them both having a routine and this revelation is making doubts spring up all over her brain. She has to accept that her husband has lied to her, and that this may not be the first time. Her trust in his for the last 7 years may have been terribly misplaced.
Tom's chapter has him pacing in a cell, worrying about what Beth might be telling the police. He's afraid that Katie may come back from the grave and ruin his idyllic family unit. He's also wondering what he will tell Beth if he does make it home, he will have to be 'economical' with the truth or he will have to tell her he's been lying to her for months.
We're going back to eight years ago and into Katie's mind where she has just accepted an engagement ring from Tom. She's pushing back all the concerns and red flags she feels Tom's behaviour is displaying and living for that moment. Tom's half of the chapter begins with his smug review of his proposal and how he knew he would win Katie over, but apparently it was ruined when they got back to the flat where he reads her texts to her friends explaining how she didn't want to cancel her plans but she didn't have a choice. The anger in Tom swells; he doesn't want to be portrayed as a control freak (which quite frankly is exactly what he is) and he begins a plan to ensure Katie stays with him and blocks Isaac from her life.
Beth and Adam grow a little closer as his enduring qualities help her relax around him and unwind her messy thoughts and worries. Beth's upbringing is mentioned here, how she grew up without a father and how negatively it impacted her, how she can't believe her husband might make their daughter go through the same pain as she did. Beth is wondering whether her and Tom's move from London into the sticks of Lower Tew was a good thing - clearly it was because of the lovely life they've built there, but Beth is being torn apart by the gossip and the way people are looking at her; she wants the anonymity of a city. That being said, hearing the news about a stabbing of a teenager, the body of a sex worker being found and another hit-and-run (all taking place in London) eases her mind on the decision of moving out of the city.
In the hour before the police's decision to charge Tom or not for the murder of Katie (without a body, mind you) Beth waits at home and decides to talk on the phone with Adam. Charming chitchat and some subtle flirting takes place in this conversation, and it looks like these two characters are heading towards a line - will they cross it? Beth gets a call from Maxwell afterwards and hears the news that Tom has been officially charged with Katie's murder.
The following chapter was a strange one; it's the inner monologue of a character who's name we aren't given. She's being strangled by a man during a sexual act, she wonders if the damp spot in the ceiling that she's been nagging her landlord about for months will be the last thing she sees before her death. Very nearly at the point of losing all vision, the man lets her go. She shouts at him for going too far but he tells her he doesn't know how to stop sometimes, and anyway, she loved it as much as him. He leaves her terrified for her life, deciding she will never let him go that far again. We don't know who this person is but it's fair to assume that the man is Tom.
All right, we are on chapter 32 and my laptop is going to die if I don't plug it in and take a break. I'll carry on with The Serial Killer's Wife tomorrow; until then, have a beautiful day! Don't forget to stay hydrated 💚
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