My Wife Is Missing

With their marriage on the rocks, Natalie, suffering from chronic, stress-related, insomnia, convinces her husband, Michael, to take an impromptu family trip to New York. Things go awry when Michael leaves the hotel to pick up a pizza and returns to find his wife and kids gone. It soon becomes obvious that Natalie has bailed on him and has taken the kids with her. Because of his wife’s precarious mental health, Michael is worried about his children’s welfare. With the help of a retired detective who seems to know an awful lot about Michael’s hidden past, he races to catch up with Natalie, who seems genuinely terrified of her husband. Palmer (The Perfect Daughter; The New Husband) has written a psychological thriller that stands out in an overcrowded genre. With no reliable narrators, the story becomes unnecessarily complicated, at times, but there are plenty of well-timed twists and unexpected turns to keep readers on their toes and reading well past their bedtime.