The Third Wife

By Lisa Jewell, Century, 2014, 405 pages
Reviewed by Ted Streuli, Nov. 12, 2021

Lisa Jewell walks the genre fence; we think of her as a suspense writer, but her work is character rich, often family drama heavy, and even teeters now and then into chick lit. I think of her work as floating from a dry martini to a vodka martini to a cosmopolitan, but I’m prone to alcohol analogies.

Jewell gave us “Then She Was Gone” and this year’s “The Night She Disappeared,” which suspense lovers took as a well-shaken, nicely bruised cocktail. That’s not at all what she pours with “The Third Wife,” which has at its core a woman who is dead by questionable means. Well, she got hit by a bus, so that’s clear; we just wonder how she ended up in front of it.

And Jewell does what she does, writing the story from two points in time, delivering readers the present attempt to solve the mystery alongside the backstory bits that lead us to how and why the dead person is dead, or the missing person is missing. Those story lines are never parallel; they angle toward one another, colliding at the book’s climax when we experience the solution in the present and see it happening in the past. Then there’s an epilogue to let us know how everyone fared afterward.

In this one, Adrian’s third wife, Maya, goes on a bender and gets hit by a bus at 3 a.m., leaving us to wonder whether her demise was due to a drunken misstep or if someone gave her a little nudge.

That mystery is secondary to the family dramas. Adrian remains on good terms with Susie, wife No. 1, and Caroline, wife No. 2, his two young-adult children (Susie’s) and his three young ones (Caroline’s). In fact, all eight of them are on such good terms that they regularly go on vacations as a group and Susie’s daughter, Cat, lives with Caroline’s family. All that despite Adrian’s having left Susie for Caroline, then Caroline for Maya.

I can suspend disbelief for a great story, but as it happens, I also have two ex-wives and you can be assured there are no mutual vacations.

Warning: Everything after this is packed with spoilers. If you want to read “The Third Wife” stop here, but I included the spoilers because I think enough of you to believe you’ll take my advice and skip this dud of a book.

Family drama: Maya isn’t really in love with Adrian, but she is in love with his oldest child, Luke, who is also in love with her. Angst!

More family drama: The kids don’t like Maya, who ruined everything, but pretend they do. Cat writes catty emails on their behalf in a sophomoric attempt to drive Maya away, which causes Maya angst.

Still more family drama: Adrian is a man-child who thinks everybody’s happy if he is happy. They’re not.

Angst!

Epilogue: Everyone confesses, Adrian realizes the error of his ways, figures out Caroline was his one true love all along, and all of them live happily ever after. Except Maya, who’s dead, and no one really knows how it happened. Moreover, no one really cares, including the reader.

Jewell has written some terrific family-centric psychological thrillers, but “The Third Wife” relies on her non-suspense skills, such as deep characters that show us bits of ourselves and help us see the world a little differently. Unfortunately, her talents in that area didn’t rise to their usual level in this one, leaving us with neither great, likable, intriguing characters nor a fast-paced, just-one-more-chapter-before-I-go-to-sleep plot.

I reached for my next Lisa Jewell novel expecting a crisp, well-made martini, but all I got was a watered-down Shirley Temple. She has winners in her portfolio, but you won’t miss anything if you leave this one on the shelf.