The Doctor’s Wife

Book Author Fiona Sussman
Rights Available: Foreign Language Only

Nothing in pottery teacher Stan Andino’s regular existence prepares him for the moment he discovers his wife naked, except for a black apron, bleaching a stain from the lounge carpet that only she can see. A CT scan one week later explains the seemingly inexplicable; Carmen Andino has a brain tumour. As Stan and their teenage sons grapple with the diagnosis and frightening personality changes in their wife and mother, Austin and Tibbie Lamb, the Andinos longstanding friends, do everything possible to assist the family in crisis. Austin, the family’s GP, oversees Carmen’s medical care, while Tibbie picks up on the home front. Then Tibbie Lamb’s body is discovered at the bottom of Browns Bay cliffs by Eliot Bard, a young autistic man. The death is initially considered ‘low priority’, a presumed suicide, and assigned to Detective Ramesh Bandara and trainee detective Hilary Stark. The Doctor’s Wife is told from various character’s perspectives. But who is lying, and who telling the truth when there are multiple potential murder suspects?

About the Author
Author and former GP Fiona Sussman was born in South Africa and now lives in NZ. She has written a number of highly acclaimed, award-winning short stories. Sussman’s short story ‘A Breath, A Bunk, A Land, A Sky’ was shortlisted for the 2020 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Her debut novel Shifting Colours was published by Allison & Busby in the UK and by Berkley in the US under the title, Another Woman’s Daughter. Her second novel, The Last Time We Spoke (Allison & Busby) was translated into Polish and won the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel in New Zealand. Addressed to Greta published in 2020 won the NZ Booklovers Award for Best Fiction.