cover image Those Lake View Wives

Those Lake View Wives

Charles Cohen. Dutton Books, $17.95 (253pp) ISBN 978-1-55611-143-3

Jack Klein, complacent and uxorious physician, has an uneasy feeling that things are not quite what they should be in this affluent suburb of Lake View, Ill. His next-door neighbor, sensuous Elizabeth Siegal, is acquitted in the shotgun killing of her husband. Frank Bernstein, an accountant who browbeats his wife, chokes to death on a large chunk of overcooked steak. And Dave Redfield, an innocuously neurotic banker, bleeds to death after inexplicably jumping through a plate-glass window. Jack is sure the wives of these unfortunate men have formed a murderous cabal, and when his increasingly hostile wife Barbara creates a support group called ``Women Without Men,'' he begins to fear for his own life. He warily begins an affair with Elizabeth, who assures him that the group meets for therapy only, but when Jack is pursued one stormy night by a group of women intent on vehicular homicide, he becomes convinced that his days are numbered. But why? This central question goes unanswered. Still, Cohen ( Daddy ) has written a pleasantly malicious story of determined women who just might get away with murder. (July)