Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for this ARC.

Pam, Nancy, Shalisa and Marlene are firm friends, as are their husbands Hank, Larry, Andre and Dave. Unfortunately, a few years ago, the husbands lost their life savings by investing in a sure bet that, well, wasn't. Since then, the marriages have been under strain as their retirement plans have changed.

One day, Dave dies suddenly in a freak accident in his garage. At least the police think it was an accident - his pals know it was murder. They were embezzling the casino where two of them work on a grand scale, and the casino owners are linked to organised crime from India. Now they are all frightened for their lives and begging their barber, Hector, who moonlights as a hitman, to kill whoever is after them.

They don't realise that their wives have as their own retirement plan an eye on the one million dollars life insurance policies that Marlene got as a payout and the others have too, and that they also know that Hector "gets done what needs doing."

This is a gloriously complicated story where everyone misunderstands everything, and in the middle is Hector, the barber and his loving wife Brenda, just trying to do what's best for them. And rescue dog Elmer who gets in everyone's way.

The reader often knows more than the characters and can see the wrong conclusions being made and foolish paths taken.
The women are generally more switched on than the men, but Padma, the casino's young and diminutive President of Operations whose mother belongs to the organised crime cartel, is distracted by a matchmaking exercise her mother more or less bullies her into and which our trio of hapless men misunderstand as hitmen flying in from India.

This is a very assured debut novel with a good pace and no boring bits. The twists and turns are deliciously funny and seeing the characters stumble about and come to wrong conclusions is hilarious, as are Padma's matchmaking attempts in all the chaos. Who cares about recovering nine million dollars if you can find love and thumb your nose at your critical mother?

Highly recommended if you like novels about long-standing relationships where frustrations boil over ("He ate my Pad Thai!") and you dither between wanting to hug your partner or kill them. The ending, the epilogue and the post script are great - every novel should end with the words "My wife was right"!