A quick note before I start my review. Be sure to check back on Monday, February 3, for the Literary Wives reviews of The Inquisitor’s Wife by Jeanne Kalogridis. We encourage anyone who has read the book to add their comments on any of our blogs. We also have a new Literary Wives Facebook page where you can comment or add a link to your own review.
Now, to the book.
Eva suspects her husband Henrik might be having an affair, so she sets herself to find out. Meanwhile, in a nearby hospital, Jonas is caring for his girlfriend Anna, who is in a coma.
It is not too long before Eva discovers Henrik is having an affair with Linda, their child’s daycare teacher. Feeling at once enraged and rejected, she goes out one night to see if men still find her attractive. She meets Jonas and spends the night with him.
Of course, Jonas is a psychopath who drowned Anna when she rejected him. This is not a spoiler, as it is revealed at the beginning of the novel. Now he decides he’s in love with Eva and begins stalking her.
All of the characters in this novel are fairly despicable. Eva is contemptuous of her husband, who lets her take care of everything. Instead of being devastated to find he’s having an affair, she immediately begins looking for revenge. Henrik is spineless, and his lover Linda turns out to be a bitch. Jason has lots of strange character traits, but I doubt that someone suffering as strongly from OCD as he is at times could at other times be free of it or be functional enough to also be a very clever stalker.
The inner thoughts of Eva and Jason, the two narrators, are related in abrupt, harsh sentences, which also characterize all of the dialogue. The characters are all one-dimensional.
In order to be fully engaged in the suspense, I think we need to feel some sympathy for Eva, but we just don’t. Perhaps if the plot hadn’t resorted almost immediately to nastiness, we would have. All in all, I wasn’t that impressed with this novel.
What? Me Read? 
oh dear this just sounds awful… I wouldn’t have picked up a book entitled “Betrayal” anyway, so thanks for confirming my snap judgement!
I like a good thriller now and then. Finding a good one is another issue.
Glad to have read your review, as I may have picked up the book based on the subject/genre.
Yeah, I have been reading a lot of the Scandinavian mystery writers, but it seems as if some of them have only gotten picked up because they’re in vogue after the success of Stieg Larsson’s books.