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LYING HUSBANDS

HOW I’ve enjoyed the BBC1 divorce drama The Split, which concludes tomorrow. Many of its plotlines revolve around lies: those selfdeluding white ones we tell ourselves, but also the humdingers that in a moment can shift a person’s axis off-kilter. There are lying husbands a gogo — a staple of so many female-led thrillers.

So far this year my favourite heart-in-mouth page-turner is the deliciously twisty Our House by Louise Candlish. It reels you in from the first page, when Fi Lawson returns to her London family home as new owners are moving in.

Only Fi never put her house on the market: when her husband cheated on her, she saved her home, not the marriage. Her estranged husband, Bram, might be able to shed some light, but the feckless fabulist has disappeared.

I loved Our House for skewering our cultural obsession with property — especially in the SouthEast, where home ownership is becoming ever more divisive.

There is home-envy and a mendacious man, too, in Paula Hawkins’ blockbusting The Girl On The Train, which impressively spotlit problem drinking, using it to create an unforgettably flawed heroine.

Rachel, its obsessive alcoholic protagonist, commutes past the house her ex-husband Tom shares with his new wife and child.

Tom blamed Rachel’s drinking for the failure of their marriage and inability to conceive. However, when a local murder shocks Rachel into fewer binges and blackouts, she starts wondering if Tom has been gaslighting her — and other women — all along.

The privileged world of Sarah Vaughan’s Anatomy Of A Scandal orbits around the star of Eton and Oxford-educated Tory government minister James Whitehouse. When he is accused of a terrible crime, should his wife, Sophie, trust his denial? Or, deep down, does she know he is a narcissist who believes himself unaccountable?

Trust me, these are immersive reads for a Bank Holiday break. Just don’t let them pollute your home life.