Fresh off her international bestseller featuring Hercule Poirot, THE MONOGRAM MURDERS, British author Sophie Hannah returns to familiar territory with her latest US release.  Originally published in the UK as THE TELLING ERROR, WOMAN WITH A SECRET is Hannah doing what she does best --- psychological thrillers that confound and challenge all who enter within.

After receiving the high honor of being named by the Christie Foundation as the successor to continue Agatha Christie's Poirot mysteries, Hannah jumps back to modern day and two of her original recurring characters: DCI  Simon Waterhouse and Sgt. Charlie Zailer, who have appeared in a handful of her novels, as well as a BBC series.

"Reading a Sophie Hannah psychological mystery/thriller is never a passive activity. Pieces of a puzzle, often introduced in creative and quizzical ways, are given to the readers bit by bit throughout the book, and WOMAN WITH A SECRET is no exception."

Reading a Sophie Hannah psychological mystery/thriller is never a passive activity. Pieces of a puzzle, often introduced in creative and quizzical ways, are given to the readers bit by bit throughout the book, and WOMAN WITH A SECRET is no exception. Like a classic Hitchcock film, it requires the observer to pay strict attention to every detail and not always believe everything you see --- or read!

“There is no such thing as a good person. There are only kind and unkind acts.” This statement, introduced by a character in this deeply layered thriller, does a good job of defining what actually takes place here. It begins with a mysterious personal ad on a UK site called IntimateLinks. The ad states that the author is looking for a woman with a secret, and then goes on to describe what appears to be the description of the murder of Damon Blundy, an infamous and controversial columnist. Damon angered a lot of famous and influential people, thus there are a slew of potential suspects.

The unlikeliest of them all is a mother and housewife named Nicki Clements. Even though she appears to have had some sort of online connection to Damon --- a relationship that some think was an actual affair --- it is still hard to believe that Nicki could be capable of such an act. The book then begins to strip away at her façade little by little. When her sister-in-law comes across a pair of notebooks from her childhood that depicts time spent in a mental institution, nothing is what it seems. We go down the rabbit hole along with all the other subjects and try to sort out reality from fantasy.

A novel that does not reveal what is actually going on until the final pages could be frustrating to some readers and, in the hands of a lesser author, might not be worth the effort. Sophie Hannah consistently defies this description as her books continue to portray real people in nightmarish and bizarre situations that are written in such clever fashion, you find yourself hanging on every single word right up to the stunning end.