"Deep Water" by Patricia Highsmith

Sam and I have a weird thing going on with books. Somehow, if one of us reads a book first, generally the other one never gets around to it. It doesn't matter how intrigued we may have been ahead of time. Once one of us has read a certain title, the other of us allows it to drift deeper and deeper into the To Be Read pile until it finally disappears.

There are rare exceptions, however. You may have gathered that The Girl on the Train was a very good example of this, and I'm happy to tell you that Deep Water is another one. This is a compelling and creepy tale, full of suspense in typical Highsmith fashion. It's the story of calm, mild-mannered Vic Van Allen and his attention-seeking wife Melinda, whose hobby is philandering. For years Vic has placidly turned a blind eye to his wife's string of boyfriends. Then, without even making a conscious decision about it, it turns out that Vic has had enough. When talk isn't enough to put a stop to it, he takes action. The last fifty pages had Sam's heart pounding throughout, and that was enough to convince me that I wanted to be sure to read this one too!

Back to our usual "one reads/the other doesn't" habit: I think subconsciously we use each other to weed out the bad, the mediocre, and the not-quite-great. It's quite a useful thing, actually. We all know there will never be enough time to read ALL the books, so guiding each other to narrow the selection to the best ones can't be a bad thing.