A Routine Infidelity by Elizabeth Coleman
About the author
Elizabeth is a successful screenwriter and playwright – author of the hit play Secret Bridesmaids Business which was adapted into a telemovie, the eponymous 2019 tv series (Seven), and it’s being developed for a new US format. She co-created the much-loved ABC drama Bed of Roses and more recently wrote on every season of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and Miss Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries.
Review
How to catch a cheating husband: The page-turner with plenty of twists. Jessie Tu, February 2, 2023. The Sydney Morning Herald
Catching cheating husbands is a viable business idea. There’s certainly no shortage of extramarital relations in inner-city Melbourne, as Edwina “Ted” Bristol discovers in Elizabeth Coleman’s A Routine Infidelity.
After returning home from years of driving Ubers in Berlin, Ted has decided to open up her own private investigation firm, called Edwina Bristol Investigations (EBI), where her clients range from warring neighbours to tyrannical and controlling bosses.
The bulk of her cases come from middle-aged women who suspect their husbands of cheating. On her business Facebook page, a typical post will include articles such as, “10 Signs Your Spouse is Cheating”.
Picture your run-of-the-mill mid-century career man who calls his wife “darling”, buys her flowers on Valentine’s Day, though isn’t really interested in the gruelling symptoms she’s experiencing from perimenopause.
This man has enough time to tell his wife lies about where he is every Thursday night, though, as Ted’s client and office-neighbour, Chantel discovers. Japanese cooking lessons?
Sorry, Chantel. Your husband’s more interested in his teacher than the food they’re supposedly making. Chantel is one of many clients “betrayed by shitheads”, and “Ted considered those shitheads her prey”.
Another client, Amber, asks Ted to surveil her husband whom she suspects is having an affair with his co-worker. She discovers that he is actually trying to steal millions from the company, and engaging his lover to assist him.
Ted’s job isn’t painless, but it’s eased by the aid of her trusty companion Miss Marple, who happens to be a miniature schnauzer.
She has the kind of relationship Richard Moser has with his German Shepherd, Inspector Rex, or Tintin with his white wire fox terrier, Snowy. Coleman revels in the archetypal anti-heroine of the mid-naughties romcom. Ted is a woman who prefers to be single, doesn’t own plants “because of her phobia about settling down”, plays Swordcraft on the weekend for fun, and thinks Chantel’s job as a spiritual medium is a load of dog excrement. (Think Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality, or Two Weeks Notice, or The Heat or any other character she plays, really.)
Meanwhile, Ted is trying to track down the person who catfished her beloved sister, Bob, who, at 49, still can’t seem to fall in love with “the right guy”. The biggest illusion women are led to believe is true love, the fairytale that chemistry, intellect and physics will align to guarantee you come into contact with a man who will single-handedly fill the humungous hole in your heart.
Yet the crippling disappointment of failed love can also be an opportunity to acknowledge the voracious, complex and tender relationship between two sisters, especially when they possess very different personalities. Coleman suffuses each character with strong emotional foundations, and a familiar, no-nonsense sensibility. They brim with the loyalty of Samwise Gamgee but aren’t afraid to strike their sword when they need to.
A Routine Infidelity is interested in the ways women confront their lives in the aftermath of betrayal. But despite the obvious seriousness and pain of adultery, Coleman never casts the mood in a grim tone.
You have to be able to enjoy the extended, blow-by-blow kind of descriptive writing to appreciate A Routine Infidelity. All the fixtures of a campy, middle-class, suburban murder mystery are here: the high drama, snappy dialogue and sensational plot twists. And who can deny the enjoyment of these things?
Though Coleman’s voice has the rhyme of someone who has written frequently for television (Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, Secret Life of Us), and the book could do with a bit of compressing, this is your regular, first-class page-turner.