Her Prodigal Husband

October 28, 2024
In this canny spin-off of her Brigid Quinn series, Masterman (Maternal Instinct) turns the focus to frustrated novelist Alice Einstein. After failing to make good on her early literary promise, Alice has spent the last several years writing greeting card messages while living with her younger sister, Liesl, in Saddlebrooke, Ariz. Ever since Liesl’s husband, Sam, disappeared a decade earlier, kindhearted Liesl has concerned herself with such causes as migrant housing and environmental conservation. Chaos swoops into the sisters’ lives when Sam suddenly returns to Saddlebrooke; Alice is skeptical of his motives, but an ecstatic Liesl welcomes him with open arms. As Alice tries—with the help of PI Brigid Quinn—­to find out why Sam has reappeared, she realizes she may have the material for a thriller that’ll put her back in the publishing game—or at least get her agent to return her calls. What Alice doesn’t bet on, however, is just how much she’ll learn about her sister over the course of her and Brigid’s investigation. Masterman piles on the twists, schemes, and false assumptions but grounds each revelation in the lives of her three-dimensional characters. The results are wickedly satisfying.

December 15, 2024
Ten years after he left her, Liesl Einstein's husband is back in the picture. But exactly what sort of picture is it? The marriage between Liesl and Samson Kinsey was never idyllic, overshadowed as it was by both something that happened to Liesl when she was 13--an infant she was babysitting succumbed to sudden infant death syndrome while she was doing her math homework--and Sam's earlier romance with her older sister, Alice, our narrator, a novelist whose recent books have been met with limited success. So, it was no great surprise when Sam dumped a significant fraction of his trust fund on Liesl and left. But why has he returned? Maybe it's because he's suffering from myositis and needs special care. Maybe his wanderings in the decade he's been on his own have persuaded him that he can't do better than Liesl. Or maybe he just wants an excuse to rekindle his relationship with Alice, who tells him in no uncertain terms that she wishes he'd leave and die and wonders whether Brigid Quinn, an FBI agent turned private investigator with her own fraught backstory, might turn up any dirt on Sam that would force his hand. In the meantime, Liesl's political activism leads her to invite Salvadoran asylum seeker Marisol Gutierrez and her son, Juan, into a household that suddenly includes Sam, and Alice starts to spin pitches for a new novel tentatively titledHer Prodigal Husband based on her untenable family situation. Masterman takes her time weaving together all these threads, but Alice is such an engaging and self-deprecating narrator that she makes even the doldrums entertaining. A high-IQ, low-key domestic thriller with more than a touch of the metafictional.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 1, 2025
Alice Einstein's writing career has faltered, and now she earns a meager living writing greeting cards while living with her sister Liesl in the Tucson suburbs. Liesl, due to a traumatic past, takes care of everyone--migrants, children, dogs--so Alice takes care of Liesl. When Liesl's ex-husband Sam returns, broke and sick, Alice is afraid Liesl will take pity and fall for his charms again. She enlists the help of private investigator Brigid Quinn (last seen in We Were Killers Once, 2019) to dig up dirt on Sam, while her thriller writer's imagination looks for ways to get rid of him. Meanwhile, Liesl takes in an asylum seeker and her young son. Sam continues to act in a slightly dodgy manner, but it's nothing solid enough for Alice to make the case to cast him out. Masterman's fans will be thrilled with the return of Brigid Quinn, but series newbies will not be lost, as the focus of the story is Alice and her relationship to her sister, her career, and the truth. Gritty, timely, and page-turning.

COPYRIGHT(2025) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.