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Summary
Summary
Now in mass market from bestselling author and "master of the genre" ( O, The Oprah Magazine ), a " fast and furious ride through wanton greed, fragile relationships, and love worth fighting for" ( Publishers Weekly, starred review).
Susie B Anthony Rabinowitz Gersten was sure her marriage to Jonah Gersten, MD--adoring spouse and doting father to their young triplets--was perfection. But when the Park Avenue plastic surgeon is found dead in the Upper East Side apartment of second-rate "escort" Dorinda Dillon, nothing makes sense to Susie--not Jonah's sexual liaison with someone like Dorinda, not the over-the-top politeness of Jonah's partners, and definitely not being universally pitied (widow of murder victim!) and quietly mocked (husband paid for sleazy sex!) by everyone she knows. Then her tough-talking, super-chic grandma Ethel flies in from Miami, and together they take on Jonah's snooty parents, his egotistical colleagues, the NYPD, and the DA as Susie tries to prove that her wonderful life with her husband was no lie.
Author Notes
Susan Isaacs was born in Brooklyn, New York on December 7, 1943. She graduated from Queens College and began her literary career as an administrative assistant at Seventeen magazine. Freelance writing and writing political speeches for Long Island politicians filled her spare time while she was home raising her children in the 1970s. Her first novel, Compromising Positions, was published in 1978 and adapted into a movie of the same title that starred Susan Sarandon and Raul Julia. Her other novels include Almost Paradise, Magic Hour, After All These Years, and Lily White. She wrote and co-produced the movie Hello Again which starred Shelley Long, Gabriel Byrne, and Judith Ivey. Her novel, Shining Through, was adapted into a movie starring Michael Douglas, Melanie Griffith and Liam Neeson.
She covered the 2000 presidential campaign for Newsday. She also reviewed books for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and Newsday. She has won numerous awards including the Writers for Writers Award, the Marymount Manhattan Writing Center Award, and the John Steinbeck Award.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Bestseller Isaacs draws on tony Long Island, gritty New York City, and a tabloid-friendly murder for this smart-alecky whodunit/surprisingly sweet love story. Susan is left alone with her three boys, big suburban house, and nagging questions when plastic surgeon hubby Jonah Gersten turns up dead in a hooker's Upper East Side apartment. Though the police and prosecutors wind up their case against call girl Dorinda Dillon, it's far from settled for Susan. "It simply didn't add up, in either my head or my heart," she confesses. And what better sidekick to track down the truth than Susan's rogue granny, Ethel. What follows is an intricate and fascinating dissection of Susan's marriage, family, husband's medical practice and partners, and the unwitting call girl at the center of it all. Isaacs (Past Perfect) brings it all together in this fast and furious ride through wanton greed, fragile relationships, and love worth fighting for. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
What was Susie Gersten's perfect husband doing in the apartment of a medium-rent call girl?Getting stabbed with a pair of scissors, it turns out, following 80 not-very-suspenseful pages devoted to filling in the back story after Jonah goes missing. On paper the Gerstens seem perfect. They have a lovely home in Shorehaven, Long Island, funded by Jonah's lucrative Manhattan plastic-surgery practice (Susie's floral-design business is more of a hobby). They have adorable four-year-old triplets (in vitro, natch), two live-in Norwegian au pairs and a full-time housekeeperit's a pretty great life. Jonah, narrator Susie tells us, was devoted to her and not the cheating kind; we tend to believe her, since she rarely has a good word to say about anyone else. Susie is a trademark zingy Isaacs heroine (Past Perfect, 2007, etc.), happy to tell us all about her designer clothes, her better-than-decent looks and her fondness for life's finer things. It's no big shock when she confesses, "I'd never been the plumbing-the-depths type," but she's fun to be with and mildly witty about her snobbish in-laws, her dismal parents, the entitled senior partner in Jonah's group practice and the dowdy homicide chief who rushes to declare the call girl the perp. The semi-snide repartee was fresher three decades ago in Compromising Positions (1978), and Susie's grief at losing Jonah never has much emotional force, though her determination to vindicate her marriage rings true. None of this is meant to be taken terribly seriously, even after Susie joins forces with her elegant grandmother to investigate the holes in the DA's case. There's only one other viable suspect, and when the homicide chief finally admits that Susie has fingered the real murderer, our heroine seems more concerned about not being thanked properly than she is happy that the killer of darling Jonah is going to jail. The mystery is barely there, but Isaacs' fans will enjoy another sharp-tongued romp through the New York privileged classes and their foibles.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
She may not be as brainy as her famous Manhattan plastic-surgeon husband, Jonah, nor as proper as his snooty rich parents. And she may be clueless about mothering, thanks to her wildly deficient Brooklynite parents (picture schlumpy, depressed Roz Chast characters), but nonetheless Susie loves her triplets, three rambunctious four-year-old boys. She also takes unabashed pleasure in her happy marriage, her floral design company, her humongous Long Island home, and her designer wardrobe. She may be shallow, as she's the first to admit, but she does have heart. And ethics, even though she's not sure what that means. And so when her husband is found stabbed to death in a prostitute's apartment, Susie is devastated, skeptical about the open-and-shut case touted by the district attorney and her impossible in-laws, and determined to unearth the truth about Jonah's killer. Her best ally turns out to be her glamorous renegade grandmother Ethel, a woman so cold she abandoned her daughter. But maybe Ethel is due for a thaw as these two queens of chutzpah and couture conduct a brazen investigation. Isaacs' latest Jewish-gal-in-distress adventure purrs along perfectly--sharply funny, all-knowing, and marvelously diverting.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
NO one likes having her husband murdered, but it's just plain mortifying when he turns up dead in the apartment of an unattractive prostitute. "Objectively speaking," says Susie Gersten, wife of the victim, "I swear to God, she looked like a ewe in a blond wig." Susie is certain that her husband, Jonah, would never have visited Dorinda Dillon (formerly Cristal Rousseau) for any unsavory reason. Objectively speaking, Susie (formerly Susan B. Anthony Rabinowitz) knows that she herself is gorgeous. Besides, Jonah, a Park Avenue plastic surgeon, had a moral code so strict that he never even tried to get out of jury duty. Most important, he adored Susie and their triplet sons, Dashiell, Evan and Mason. Though Susie's no bleeding heart, she's certain Dorinda must have been framed. But why would anyone, including the police, believe her when the gossip is so much more fun? As Susie quickly realizes, Jonah's former partners - even his awful parents - would rather assume the worst. At least that might make the papers stop printing headlines like "No Trace of 'Face Ace' Hooker." It falls to Susie's grandmother, Ethel, the one semi-sane member of the family, to help her prove everyone else wrong. And since this is a Susan Isaacs novel, we can be reasonably sure the good gals will win after being put through a satisfyingly twisty obstacle course. We can also be sure Susie will prove to be a peppy and irreverent chronicler of Long Island suburban life - and we'll come to think of her as a friend. But a rather discursive friend, one who never knows which details to leave out. Here's Susie's account of the moment it first dawns on her that Jonah isn't coming home: "I walked across the bedroom toward the window that faced the front and sat in Jonah's favorite chair in the world, a Regency bergère with gilded wood arms and legs. It was upholstered in creamy silk with a ribbon motif. When I'd spotted the bergère at an auction house, an embarrassingly loud "Ooh!" had escaped me. . . . Even in that instant, petrified that life was about to give me the cosmic smack in the face that would make every woman on Long Island tell her best friend, 'Thank God I'm not Susie Gersten,' I knew if I were sitting in a repro Regency covered in polyester damask, I would feel worse." Maybe this really is the kind of thought that would flit through a desperate wife's mind, but what's it doing in Isaacs's novel? She gives us pages and pages of such noodling, and it trips up the book's momentum. A related problem is that each new character (they're introduced with metronomic regularity) seems exactly as important as all the previously introduced characters. "This person's getting a lot of ink," you tell yourself, "so she must be a suspect." Then you realize that everyone gets the same amount of ink. In theory, this should fill the story with fascinating people; in reality, it impedes the pacing. But the characters are fun to meet, and the accretion of detail makes the book nice and chewy. What's harder to forgive is that when the culprit is finally tracked down, his (or her!) plea agreement requires her (or him!) to tell Susie all about the murder. When will crime writers invent a way to summarize a murder that doesn't involve an endless, bogus-sounding confession? That may be a mystery not even Susie Gersten can solve. Susan Isaacs's narrator is a peppy and irreverent chronicler of Long Island suburban life. Ann Hodgman's "How to Die of Embarrassment Every Day," a book for children, will be published this fall.
Library Journal Review
Imagine being the smart and adored wife of a marvelous and successful man as well as the proud, if harried, mother of his darling four-year-old triplet boys in New York City. Then, one seemingly ordinary day, your thoroughly reliable husband does not return home from work. Isaacs vividly conveys the initial panic and gut-wrenching fear that Susie Gersten feels in those first hours as she contacts family members, his colleagues, and the police. Days go by with no word, and Susie fears the worst. Nothing, however, could have prepared her for the news that her beloved husband, Dr. Jonah Gersten, was found murdered in a call girl's apartment. Susie can't accept it, and by asking questions and challenging assumptions, she fights for the memory of her good marriage. VERDICT Issacs's (Past Perfect) latest novel depicts the hardship of a sudden death and the capacities of a clever and spirited woman to stay engaged in the world while struggling with grief. For all of its serious aspects, there are good measures of wit and fun here. All of Isaacs's novels have been New York Times best sellers-this one will be no exception. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/10.]-Sheila Riley, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, D.C. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.