Just who is this ROBBIE’S WIFE? Before you know that, first you have to meet Jack Stone.

In Russell Hill’s new novel – a Hard Case Crime original – Stone is a 60-year-old screenwriter. Twice divorced and in a creative rut, he sells everything he owns but his laptop, which he takes with him to England, where he hopes to recharge his batteries, save his soul and produce a script that’ll bring him a landslide of a studio payday.

He settles on renting a room at the English countryside home of Robbie Barlow, a brutish sheep farmer who lives with his 10-year-old son and a true MILF of a wife, Maggie. At first, Stone fits right in like a member of the family. But he takes a shine to the two-decades-younger Maggie, and begins to confuse real life with the sexual fantasies he types out onscreen in proper Final Draft format.

Eventually, Maggie gives in to Stone’s flirting, hopping into his bed one day for some hot, on-her-menses lovin’. That’s all Stone needs to fall in love, which is a nice way of saying the man becomes obsessed. It grows and festers to the point where there’s no telling what Stone will do … and then he does it.

With a little more lyrical polish than the usual Hard Case offering, Hill paints a picturesque portrait of the British landscape – one which plays host to an increasingly cruel love triangle. As mere wishful thinking gives way to flirting, which soon heads toward sexual congress, it’s as if the reader is seduced right along with the leads. With details of the local pubs with their house brews and ploughman’s lunches, the novel is intoxicating enough to make you wish you were living it.

But then in the third act, ROBBIE’S WIFE takes a turn that is perverse and pathetic on Stone’s part, revealing another side to our protagonist that crudely flips him into the antagonist. It’s a brave move on Hill’s part, even if it may not quite pan out. The new direction didn’t lose me entirely, but it feels as if it doesn’t quite fit with all that comes before it – a square peg trying to pound its way through a round hole. And the supposed twist? It’s only that if you’ve never read a book or seen a movie within the genre before.

With its contemporary setting, literary bent and Hollywood name-dropping, ROBBIE’S WIFE at first reminded me of my least-favorite Hard Case title: Madison Smartt Bell’s STRAIGHT CUT, but luckily got far better, fast. –Rod Lott

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