A really excellent crime novel, that like the best of them, examines the human condition against the backdrop of a murder. ( )

Someone told me once that men always have their eye out for the next woman of their dreams—even if they're happily married. This theme seems to be the case in Goldilocks when Dr. Jamie Purchase comes home to find his wife and children savagely stabbed to death. He immediately calls his family attorney, Matthew Hope, who tries to solve the crime to help his client. Matthew, who has been having an affair of his own, soon discovers divorce has left a very bitter taste in Jamie's estranged family. Now he has to figure out which of them is capable of murder. I love Ed McBain's style of writing, and this book was no exception. It grabbed me from the first page—I had to finish it the same day. ( )

In the midst of an argument with his wife at 3:00 in the morning, lawyer Matthew Hope receives a phone call from a client by the name of Jamie Purchase whose wife and two daughters have been brutally murdered. He rushes out to assist but soon finds himself involved in a murder case where the husband and his ex-wife seem to have solid alibis but there are soon possible cracks in those alibis. Then Jamie's son pleads guilty to the crime although both Matthew and the police detective doubt his story.

As in any god detective story, there are possible false leads which in this story are Jamie's affair with another woman, his ex-wife's open hatred for his murdered wife and Matthew's own affair with a married woman.

Actually the novel's main theme is about affairs and how they disrupt families and what they they do to children. They often lead to intense anger that is taken out on friends, children and ex spouses. The title refers to what one ex called her former husband's new blond wife which became the name by which their children also knew their stepmother.

Having personal knowledge of an affair, reading the guilt that lovers feel because of their attraction to a new person brought back many unpleasant memories. If you are having an affair, reading this novel may give you pause about you are doing. ( )

I received this book 8 days ago.
I did not find this story as interesting as many others I have read. The book was more about who was sleeping with who.
I felt more time could have been spent on the murder and the final outcome. ( )

It's really quite difficult to write anything meaningful about this book without inundating you with spoilers, but here's my best effort.

Matthew Hope, another of McBain's series characters, a lawyer, gets a call in the middle of the night from _______ who reports that his _______ and ________ have been ________. Hope rushes over to _______'s __________ where he finds the ________ already involved in ____________. Then the _______ is found in the ________ and he _________. In the meantime, Hope does some _________ on his own and discovers that ___ ____ _______ ____ __ seems. There are multiple _________ of ___________ and ___________ on the _________ and _________ of having an ___________.

Classic McBain.

P.S. The publisher's description of the book has inaccuracies. ( )