Melanie (MELNELYNN) reviewed on 10/19/2011 + 669 more book reviews

Isabel Raine would probably be the first to admit that her five-year marriage to Marcus has been anything but idyllic. Marcus is driven, ambitious, sometimes secretive; he's a passionate lover but can be emotionally distant, even --- if Isabel's sister is to be believed --- cold. But Isabel, a novelist, loves Marcus deeply. She believes that, in him, she has found the perfect antidote to her own over-emotional, over-analytical nature.

When Marcus fails to come home after a long day at work, Isabel initially fumes more than she panics; Marcus's tendency to get caught up in work and forget his domestic responsibilities has been a pattern throughout their relationship. But when Isabel gets a truncated, panicky phone call consisting of little more than a man's scream, she fears the worst. When Isabel arrives at Marcus's office, the FBI is hot on her heels and soon beats her into oblivion.

When Isabel wakes up, she learns that Marcus is still missing, the FBI agents are really just thugs, Marcus's entire office staff has been murdered, and the office and Isabel and Marcus's own apartment have been ransacked. Soon, though, with the cooperation of two gung-ho police officers, Isabel learns even more troubling details. Marcus Raine was apparently not her husband's real name, but the name of another Czech national who disappeared a decade earlier. She also discovers that all her personal and joint bank accounts have vanished into thin air. Who was this man Isabel slept next to for years? Did she really know him at all?

Isabel's quest --- guided initially by only a few key names and a cryptic, frantic text message --- will take her to the most remote regions of Marcus's past and into stranger mysteries than even her novelist's creativity could have imagined. It will also take her straight into the path of a dangerous conspiracy that could end her quest once and for all.

The basic plot of DIE FOR YOU --- a woman learns that her husband is not who she trusted him to be --- probably sounds like nothing new. In Lisa Unger's capable hands, however, this plot line goes far beyond mere thriller territory and into somewhere excitingly different. Unger facilely handles the novel's suspense, keeping readers on the edge of their seats as new and surprising twists are constantly uncovered. At the same time, she relates the primary theme to the lives of all her characters, from Isabel's own life to that of her sister and her brother-in-law, to her mother, even to the detectives investigating the case.

People are not always who they seem, Unger's novel resolutely declares, and with rich characterization and suspenseful plotting, readers will be swept up in her world --- and in this unsettling idea --- from start to finish.

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