Author:  Susan Isaacs
Title:  As Husbands Go
Publisher:  Scribner

Susan B Anthony Rabinowitz Gersten is a happily married (to a plastic surgeon, no less!) mother of four-year-old triplets who wakes up one morning in her Long Island bedroom to find her husband missing. To say this is unlike him is an understatement. Jonah is a man of routine with, Susie tells us, "an actual moral code. Not just the predictable DON'T SHOPLIFT AT BERGDORF'S MEN'S STORE." So it comes as quite a shock to everyone when Jonah's dead body is found in a prostitute's apartment. Soon the police pin the murder on the missing call girl and the wheels of justice start to turn.

Or do they?

It's not just the humiliation factor—though being known as "poor Susie" is quite a strain—it's that something doesn't ring true about the whole setup. So the grieving widow, despite her fragile emotional state (she describes it as "Premenstrual Barbie meets Bride of Chuckie") sets out to find the truth.

Susie is aided and abetted in this pursuit by her grandmother, Ethel, a woman Susie met only twice before Ethel shows up in her living room during shiva. (The backstory is complicated, but then, so is Ethel. Let's just say she's now an octogenarian lesbian who never met a thought she didn't express. Loudly. Laced with profanity.) Whether Ethel is much help is debatable, but at least she provides moral support, something conspicuously lacking from Susie's parents and in-laws.

Susie narrates the story and her personality shines through every page. Her descriptions paint clear mental pictures and are often laugh-out-loud funny. She describes her late husband this way: "picture a slightly older—and significantly shorter—Orlando Bloom, with a teeny touch of male pattern baldness." Her twin au pairs "bore such a resemblance to Miss Piggy I was waiting for their visas to expire before buying the DVD of The Muppets Take Manhattan for the boys." However, this is more than a lighthearted crime-solving tale—author Isaacs' exposition of the mind-numbing, manic, exhausting process of genuine grief is dead on.

In the beginning I thought As Husbands Go would turn out to be a cross between "Real Housewives of Long Island" and the Thin Man movies, but it's more like a Stephanie Plum novel minus the graphic love scenes and with a little more heart. The pace drags a bit in the middle, but the story never actually bogs down.

In the end, as with all good crime novels, justice is actually served. Susie learns more about her husband, her family, and herself than she ever expected, and comes through it all a sadder but wiser woman. She and her boys will go on. Meanwhile, as Ethel says, "The best a girl can do is mind her ethics. And eat a nice lunch."

 

**This review first published on August 3, 2010.