The violent death of a Seattle comedian looking for a comeback opens the door to a full-bore investigation of his wife, who has every reason to dread the spotlight.In his time, Jimmy Peralta was the star of the successful TV show The Prince of Poughkeepsie. His time was quite a while ago, but after years of retirement, a chance remark at an awards dinner has paved the way for Jimmy's return on the streaming platform Quan…until he's found in his bathtub with his femoral artery slashed. Also found in the bathroom is his fifth wife, yoga instructor Paris Peralta, who tells Jimmy's oldest friend, attorney Elsie Dixon, that she returned from a work conference in Vancouver to find him dead and grabbed his straight-edged razor in confusion. Since the surveillance monitors that could confirm what time Paris crossed the border have gone dead, Elsie prepares her client to dig in for a difficult trial. The lawyer doesn't know that this isn't Paris' first rodeo. She fled Toronto many years ago under an assumed name in the wake of a basement fire that claimed the life of stripper Joelle Reyes, whose mother, Ruby Reyes, was already doing time for killing her married lover, bank president Charles Baxter, under circumstances that left her with the nickname the Ice Queen. As Ruby, who's about to be paroled after 25 years, sends Paris a series of escalating blackmail demands, journalist Drew Malcolm, who has his own uncomfortable ties to Joey Reyes, seizes on Paris' arrest as fodder for his true-crime podcast, Things We Do in the Dark, that might help exorcise his personal demons. But that exorcism stands at the end of a long and twisty road.Gripping enough to make you accept every contrivance and beg for more.

At the start of this taut if flawed psychological thriller from Hillier (Little Secrets), the police find Paris Peralta in her Seattle home holding a bloody razor over her husband, comedian Jimmy Peralta, who’s lying dead in the bathtub, and arrest her. Because Jimmy was on the cusp of launching a much anticipated comeback, the media attention surrounding the case threatens to expose Paris’s long-hidden secrets to a ruthless blackmailer. Meanwhile, Drew Malcolm, a journalist turned crime podcaster, receives word that notorious killer Ruby Reyes (aka the Ice Queen), now perceived as a victim of sexual abuse, is about to be freed on parole after serving 25 years of a life sentence for the murder of her rich married lover. Drew knew Ruby’s teenage daughter, who became a drifter after her mother went to prison and later died in a mysterious fire, and decides to focus his latest podcast on the Reyes case. Some readers may find the use of flashbacks to reveal the obvious connection between the two stories cumbersome, and the solution to Jimmy’s murder may strike others as perfunctory. Still, this heartfelt account of one woman’s attempt to break free of an abusive childhood will resonate with many. Agent: Victoria Skurnick, Levine Greenberg. (July)