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Author Noble’s novel is a saucy little satire on human frailty. It dramatizes not only the mistakes our egos and libidos often lead us into but also our inherent intellectual ability to rationalize and accept less than honorable behavior. In other words, we may all be prone to screwing up, but some of us are fortunate enough to find tolerable ways of living with our moral lapses.
Dave’s a banker. He has an attractive wife, a successful but tenuous business, and a couple of mistresses on the side. Samantha is Dave’s wife. She’s an artist who undergoes a potential sexual assault while Dave’s away on business. Desmond is a neighbor who foils the dastardly perpetrator, and Molly is the police officer in charge of overseeing the case. In the course of the story, Desmond will fall for Samantha, who will find out about Dave’s philandering, while Molly tries to figure out if Dave actually set his wife up to be murdered. To divulge more of the plot would spoil a number of revealing twists and turns.
Noble is a witty writer as interested in exploring human emotions and behavior as he is in weaving an involving narrative. His characters seem real, not simply pulled from some mystery primer. His prose reads easily, and his pace is swift. Even when providing an authoritative interpretation of the last financial crisis, he never descends into diatribe. This is a quick read long on irony but never short of compassion. It’s fun finding out why the banker is gleeful and determining whether or not he’ll stay that way.