Seven great books built around cheating spouses & affairs

Peter Swanson is the Sunday Times and New York Times best selling author of seven novels, including The Kind Worth Killing, winner of the New England Society Book Award, and finalist for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, Her Every Fear, an NPR book of the year; and his most recent, Every Vow You Break.

[My Book, The Movie: The Kind Worth Killing; The Page 69 Test: The Kind Worth Killing.]

At CrimeReads Swanson tagged seven "favorite thrillers, all of which find interesting ways to incorporate the cheating spouse," including:

The End of the Affair, by Graham Greene (1951)

Not a traditional suspense novel by any stretch, but there is a large mystery at the heart of this story of a writer obsessed with a married woman. As the novel begins writer Maurice Bendrix is still reeling from his affair with Sarah, the wife of a neighbor and acquaintance. Maurice learns from the husband that Sarah seems to have taken a new lover and they hire a private investigator to uncover the truth.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The End of the Affair also appears on Dwyer Murphy's list of ten great opening paragraphs from the works of Graham Greene, Travis Elborough's list of the ten best books featuring parks, Karin Altenberg's top ten list of books about betrayal, Howard Norman's six favorite books list, Newsweek's list of love-charmed novels from bomb-blitzed London, Alex Preston's top 10 list of fictional characters struggling with faith, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best explosions in literature, ten of the best umbrellas in literature, ten of the best novels about novelists, and ten of the best priests in literature, and Douglas Kennedy's top ten list of books about grief. It is one of Pico Iyer's four essential Graham Greene novels.

--Marshal Zeringue