PERFECT
Harry Kraus, MD
Zondervan
Mystery/Suspense
ISBN: 9780310272847

The talented Harry Kraus (COULD I HAVE THIS DANCE?) crafts this absorbing, suspense-filled story of a doctor's wife who has the perfect life and everything money can buy --- but finds it is not enough to quell her guilt over her past.

Trophy wife Wendi Stratford is the daughter of a minister who works as an accident reconstructionist. She is frustrated with her high-driving surgeon husband, Dr. Henry Stratford, and in love with her piano teacher, Jack Renner. She's also carrying a boatload of guilt over an incident in her past that helped land her mother in a wheelchair in a nursing home. Add to that her pressure over being the perfect child, and Wendi is about to leave everything and do what she wants --- and have the man and the adulterous fling she desires.

But events intercede. After Jack is hospitalized in a horrific accident and slips into a coma, Henry does the surgery necessary to bring him back from the brink of death. Then, Jack's parents and fiancée, Yolanda Pate, show up and end up bunking at Wendi's home while Jack recuperates. Jack wakes from his coma but seems to suffer from amnesia. When Jack's fiancée dies in Wendi's bed --- from an overdose of pills prescribed by Henry --- evidence begins to point to Wendi, or possibly Henry, as the murderer.

Henry has his own set of problems. Frustrated by his wife's lack of attention, and vulnerable to temptations that lurk right around the corner, he's ripe for an affair. When his resident physician, a sultry blonde, flirts with him and then is killed under mysterious circumstances, the plot thickens further. Do we really know who Henry is? Drugs, affairs, amnesia and guilty cover-ups all wind throughout the plot until its chilling conclusion.

One complicating theme is Wendi's sister Rene, the typecast rebellious daughter, who shows up pregnant and HIV-positive on Wendi's doorstep. Wendi, who is unable to bear a child of her own, must decide if she wants a new start with Henry and adopt her sister's child, or continue to wait and see if Jack regains his memory --- and if they'll renew their fledgling affair. And her marriage is not easily dismissed. Henry's attentions toward her prove confusing. She muses during one scene, “Yes, he worked late and made me fight for second place, but he was compassionate and thorough with his patients, something that gave me comfort since he was the one in charge of Jack. The pendulum of my heart stood still, threatening to arc in the opposite direction from the one I'd been on: an arc towards loneliness, emotional isolation, and divorce.”

Point-of-view changes are smooth, and there are some surprises lurking in every chapter. Kraus portrays Henry as a multi-faceted character impossible to dislike, even when he's covering up his myriad mistakes and obsessive compulsive in his mannerisms. The author does a great job showing, not telling. One interesting way he does that is to have Henry check himself in the mirror every morning in the same sequence (hair, tie, jacket, pants and zipper. Then his zipper again.) It's these kinds of scenes that tell us more about the characters than if he spelled out all the details for us about their personalities.

When Wendi gets involved in the investigation of Jack's crash, it unleashes a hornet's nest of troubles. Right up until the end, we're never quite sure if Henry is a sympathetic figure,  or something more sinister. The ending is complicated in that it neither wraps up all the loose ends neatly nor leaves us hanging in a satisfactory or unsatisfactory way --- you decide. Faith fiction readers who enjoy a good tale of suspense will find plenty to like in Kraus's latest novel.

    --- Reviewed by Cindy Crosby. Contact Cindy at phrelanzer@aol.com

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