When the rich man first meets the teacher on an airplane, he strokes a lock of her blond hair and says: “So beautiful.

The rich man - lynchpin of the triangle - says laughably “intellectual” things and looks good in both a suit and a pair of jeans.Īlthough the sinister elements may begin on the pale side, they soon suggest all sorts of gaslighting and bluebearding. The other belongs to the man’s hard-bitten ex, a saleswoman at Saks resentfully catering to the spoiled matrons who used to be her peers. One belongs to a young and apparently innocent preschool teacher who has been swept off her feet by a rich man - a hedge fund manager, no less. “The Wife Between Us” alternates between two points of view. But the surfaces are very shiny and lots of fun.Īt first, it looks as if Hendricks and Pekkanen have written a book that’s more romance than thriller. “Need to Know” won’t pose any threat to John le Carré because it’s all surfaces. When penetrating a computer, is an analyst really given a choice between clicking on “active” or “passive,” depending on whether she wants to mess around in there? It’s possible - more likely, certainly, than a set of wedding guests unwittingly divided between C.I.A. Cleveland has worked for the C.I.A., so the tradecraft in “Need to Know” is of special interest. But instead of easing up, she doubles down. And by, she’s dangling the sort of secret normally reserved for an ending. partner is allowed to see it.Īll of this is persuasively conveyed in the opening pages of Cleveland’s novel. And the information is so secret not even her F.B.I. But the danger may lie closer to home: Using the new program, Vivian finds a file on the computer of one suspected handler that contains an unencrypted photo of her own husband.

Two of her colleagues have already been “pitched,” apparently unsuccessfully. Coordinating with the F.B.I., she has designed an algorithm to pinpoint Russian “handlers,” the spies running the spies, a matter of heightened urgency since they’ve recently become more aggressive. The couple are in financial straits, and Vivian needs a promotion. analyst named Vivian Miller is on the phone assuring her husband, a software engineer, that she can leave Langley to pick up one of their sick kids, she’s also impatiently checking her computer as she downloads a highly classified new counterintelligence program.

The wife between us novel