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The Spy's Wife
by Reginald Hill
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Felony & Mayhem (2006-04-15)
ISBN: 1933397330
EAN: 9781933397337
Dewey Decimal #: 823.914
Binding/Media: Paperback - 240 pages
SKU: 00-P75Y-0FF7
Condition: Very Good
Comments: Text is clean with no markings. Spine is creased from being read previously. Binding is tight.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
Molly Keatley is deeply contented with her life, her loving husband, her comfortable home in an attractive London suburb. Things are so pleasant, in fact, that they’re ever so slightly boring, but that changes abruptly one bright September morning, when her husband comes rushing home, mutters a hasty, unexplained apology . . . and disappears. Minutes later, two strange men arrive with news that her husband is in fact a Soviet spy, and that the sleepy joys of her marriage have acted as a cover for years of personal and public betrayal. Her husband, it appears, has spent nearly a decade using her for his own purposes, and now the British intelligence service want to use her for theirs. It would be so easy to give in, to back away from the conspiracies and intrigues that suddenly loom in front of her. But the shock of Sam’s betrayal has woken Molly out of her long, complacent dream, and she is no longer prepared to be anybody’s pawn.
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Customer Reviews
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Consequences for a defected's spy's wife
Rating  (3)
Date: 2010-03-25
This is the story of a British wife/homemaker whose husband comes home unexpectedly, runs inside for a few things and then drives away, saying "Sorry" as he tears up one of her rosebushes. She finds out not much later that she has much more to be annoyed about than just the rosebush when she is visited by 2 officials who tell her that her husband is a Soviet spy. The book follows Molly's journey on how she deals with this revelation and how others around her are pushing her to take on their agendas. The British spy service wants her to work for them to root out her husband's contacts and possibly find him, and she has other challenges with a sick mother who is going into surgery, a dependent father, and a former fiancee, now married, who still wants her. The style is very British, but I liked how Molly becomes stronger and stands up for what she wants. The ending was a little unexpected, but not too unsatisfying.
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Diamond in the rough - great read
Rating  (5)
Date: 2010-02-18
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
I picked up an old book at our library book sale because of the title, The Spy's Wife - I had not yet discovered Reginald Hill's books. I opened the book thinking it was probably going to be old-fashioned and boring, but was sucked in from the first page, and couldn't put it down. Hill's clarity of writing, his ability to get me into the world and mind of the characters took my breath away. After I finished the book, I immediately starting reading all of Hill's book. I must say that The Spy's Wife was one of his best written books, even though you can see his skill mature over the years as you read his other books. If you are a Reginald Hill fan, read this one too.
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A lesser known but far from minor book by Hill
Rating  (4)
Date: 2009-08-04
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
I did start this thinking that it wold be a slighter book than I'm used to from the author. efinitely not so. It is, as others have pointed out, more of a character study than an espionage thriller. However, it still shows the expected sardonic humor Reginald Hill uses to great advantage, and it does center n the title character's growing maturity as she reacts to the sudden knowledge that the man she married led a life she never suspected.
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More story than mystery but still very good.
Rating (4)
Date: 2008-02-12
4 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
Molly is the most surprised of anyone to find that her husband is suspected of being a spy. As she, and the government's investigator, discover, there is far more going on than meets the eye. Another reviewer mentions that this is a character study, and it is, sort of...but so well done, with facts and suspicions unraveled in a so cohesive and engaging way that the reader does not easily guess the next step. Molly doubts her marriage, herself and her ability to interpret the world --as though the image in the mirror shakes and wavers, only to find that the reflection contains more depth than originally imagined. I, too, love the Daizel(sp?) and Pascoe mystery series. I was ready to suspect that Reginald Hill would fall on his face outside of his series (as Peter Lovesey does outside of the Diamond series). Not so. Hill is skilled, sensitive to character, never forgets plot and draws his reader along with clues and sidebars that make any mystery more than a puzzle. All of his books are character driven, and this one more than most. The denouement is a bit predictable, but the process of getting there completely enjoyable. While some of Hill's books suit more than others, none of them disappoint more than a star's worth (on Amazon's scale). So far, all of Hill's work that I have read have been worth the read.
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First rate characterization
Rating (4)
Date: 2007-09-11
7 out of 7 customers found this reveiw helpful
Hill got me immediately into the head of Molly, and I stayed there for the three days it took me to read this book. From complacent housewife to liberated woman, but always the spy's wife, Molly is a pleasure. When confronted with her journalist husband's treachery, she falls apart, goes into denial but not completely. There's a down-to-earth, unflappable even unemotional North English core that copes in the face of adversity. She goes home to her parents, but that isn't what it seems, either. She confronts, accepts, rejects, abandons her ex-fiance and stands in for her mother while her mother and father confront the mother's life-threatening illness. All at the same time, she's watched and even hounded by a British Secret Service agent whom she comes to respect, if not love. Molly is her mother's daughter, and her forcefulness and her resolution come through as she is confronted again and again with her husband's betrayals, both personal and political.
While Molly's story is wonderful, there is a glitch. The obnoxious reporter and the American woman don't quite ring true. They seem to have no other purpose than to goad Molly--and they do that--but, as characters, they appear flat. They lack believable motivation, and they created annoyance, not tension. Beyond this weakness, however, the book is an excellent, enjoyable read, and Molly has resonance even after the finish.
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