The Lie in Our Marriage (Detective Dan Riley #6)

On a warm spring evening, guests gather in a perfectly manicured garden to celebrate Maggie and Len’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Maggie leans against the apple tree in the sprawling grounds of her beautiful home. She watches her fun-loving husband and darling children and her heart swells with pride. As the joyful party atmosphere disappears into the night, close by, the lifeless body of a young woman is pulled from a river.

Slipping upstairs to find the special gift she’s made for her adoring husband, Maggie stumbles across something else hidden amongst the dusty boxes of once-loved toys and family keepsakes…

A silky pink scarf printed with tiny black skeletons that doesn’t belong to her. She holds it up to her face, breaths in the sweet sickly perfume, its scent familiar, and tendrils of fear snake through her body. The scarf is stained with splashes of blood.

But as Maggie hurries to rejoin the party and pour herself a glass of champagne to toast the man she’s enjoyed decades of happy marriage with, she catches a news flash of the local girl’s murder. She stares at the girl with the beautiful face, long ice-blonde hair and, draped loosely around her neck, Maggie recognises it instantly. She’s wearing the scarf.