The Dead Man's Wife

August 20, 2012
Jones's third Mike Coletti crime novel (after 2011's The Gravedigger's Ball) explodes with a drug-related cop killing, relentlessly piles up body after body around former policewoman now Philadelphia D.A. Andrea Wilson, but deflates rapidly in a welter of lame characterizations and awkward, overheated prose ("Her lithe physique was accented by taut calves peering out from a fitted skirt, and as she paced the floor in a plunging silk blouse that fluttered when she moved, she was energy itself, beautiful and powerful at the same time"). Andrea, unhappily married to research scientist Paul Wilson and carrying on a noontime affair with her courtroom opponent, awakens one night believing that she has killed Paul and flees, covered in blood. She still has the power to make her old detective flame, 58-year-old Coletti, improbably "dizzy with desire" as he pursues the real culprits. Alas, Andrea's reckless rush to jailhouse redemption fails to persuade, due to mawkish dialogue, creaky scenery, and tired clichés. Agent: Jill Marr, Sandra Dijkstra Literary.