H erman and Teddie are an affectionate couple in their sixties, married—but not to each other. They are “friends with benefits” who rent a little cottage to hook up in. The arrangement works because Herman’s wife Sylvia, who lost her libido, and Teddie’s husband George, who’s impotent, quietly tolerate their spouses’ affair.

All that changes, though, when a dead body turns out to be George’s “office wife” Angela: his closest colleague. And when Angela’s memo surfaces, accusing him of sexual harassment at work, George is arrested and detained in jail over a long holiday weekend.

That gives Teddie and Herman time to go sleuthing and save him. They offer to work with the homicide detective; but she regards it as interference. While an ex-cop podcaster and a true-crime blogger are itching to convict George in the court of public opinion, Sylvia knows a computer tech whom Herman hires to find exculpatory evidence. But George has never trusted Herman, and doesn’t want his help!

Searching for the killer is making Herman and Teddie frustrated, conflicted and tense. Anxiety is siphoning all the joy out of their relationship. They ricochet from suspect to suspect. Was it someone Angela worked with? Someone she grew up with? Someone she slept with?

Time is running out. George is due in court. They will have to break the law—and maybe break off their affair—to discover what really happened to the office wife.

The Office Wife is the second book
in Hal’s Friends With Benefits series
that began with The Nest.
Read a sample.