Man and Wife
A wife who's too good to be true usually isn't, and the cliché holds  true in Andrew Klavan's engrossing little thriller. Psychiatrist Cal Bradley is  married to Marie, a devout, adoring, sensuous helpmate, and he's happier than he  ever thought he'd be. In fact, he's surprisingly content to ignore the signs  that something in her past is still troubling her deeply, until he sees his wife  in the arms of a stranger. Then young Peter Blue, accused of battering his  girlfriend and setting a church on fire, comes under Cal's care. When Peter  discloses his relationship with the stranger Cal saw in the woods with his wife,  Marie's past suddenly explodes into the present, threatening to turn Cal's world  upside down. There's not a lot of subtlety here. The conclusion is practically  handed to the reader on the first page, with its heavy foreshadowing. But the  novel works anyway because of Klavan's deft characterization of Peter, a  complex, spiritual adolescent who forces Cal to confront his own conscience and  his conflict between love and duty.--Jane Adams