The Widow's Husband's Secret Lie

The Widow’s Husband’s Secret Lie is a parody of the domestic thriller genre, critiquing the genre’s reliance on plot and character tropes as well as its improbable and sometimes arbitrary-seeming plot twists. Each of the central characters in the novella represents a common character type found in domestic thrillers. Alice is the naive, privileged wife, while Grant is the perfect-seeming husband who is secretly an abusive monster. Poppy is the best friend whose only character traits are being a supportive sounding board and loyal cheerleader for the main character. Brant is the less-successful secret twin, Eliza is the loyal but nosy elderly employee, and Willie is the seductive household staff with a mysterious past. The fact that most of the novella’s characters can be slotted easily into well-known character types is not an accident—it is part of the text’s parody of genre. Accordingly, the narrative creates deliberate caricatures, comically exaggerating information that supports each character type and limiting information that might create more individual nuance.

The story also features plot tropes often found in domestic thrillers. Grant, a seemingly-dead husband, reappears. A woman shows up claiming that Grant had a secret second family.