SOLVED. General fiction about unhappily married couple who embark on series of threesomes, later involves a bit of a suspense/thriller element but is definitely not erotica [s]

[Sarah]

I swear this book had a simple title such as Threesome or Trio or Three or Menage a Trois, but my searches for those titles and permutations thereof turned up nothing.

Here's more about the book (**POSSIBLE SPOILERS**):

The book begins with the main character catching her then-boyfriend in bed with another woman and, mystified, enjoys watching. Despite his infidelity, the pair marry and start either a PR shop or a graphic design shop in NYC. They soon tire of their sex life, and he talks her into having threesomes. He places an ad for the third party (always a woman, and I think he always wants a redhead) in the Greenwich Village Gazette (I think), and thus they embark on their sexual escapades, although the main character is not always comfortable with what they do.

Usually the threesome goes something like this: The third party arrives to find just the wife in the apartment. She leads the other woman to the guest bedroom, where the husband is hiding in the closet to watch. Once the two women start to make love, the husband would usually step out of the closet to join in. Sometimes he would get more involved with the other woman and ignore his wife, and sometimes he would be more of a spectator than a participant.

In addition to the threesomes, the husband introduces a degree of danger to their couplings, often threatening her with a gun while they have sex. One night, he comes damn near close to killing her. The husband has rage issues, and then, almost incomprehensibly, he kills himself.

Not long after the husband's suicide, the main character meets another redhead, and the two become lovers. With each day, if memory serves, the other woman becomes more and more a clone of the main character, which creeps the main character out, and they split up.

Toward the end of the novel, the spurned ex-lover sneaks into the main character's apartment, dressed in one of the dead husband's suits, and tries to reenact the night when the husband almost shot and killed the main character. It's eventually revealed that the husband had contacted this woman before his death and had arranged for her to meet his wife (after his death) and to kill her for him (presumably because he couldn't bring himself to do it himself and wanted to extract some kind of revenge on his wife). The main character somehow gets away from or subdues her ex-lover (she might have killed her in self-defense--I can't remember).

The book ends with the main character in Italy, randomly sleeping with Italians, men and women alike.

As I said, this book is not erotica nor is it "chick lit" or full-on suspense/thriller stuff. I swear it had a one-word title and was written by a woman, probably within the 21st century, or at least no later than 1995. (Although the absence of using Craigslist to find the third party for the threesomes does make me wonder if perhaps the book is older than I believe it to be.)

[K.]

This sounds a lot like Julie Hilden's 3, which was published in 2003. It is considered a more modern interpretation of the Story of O, which is an older classic erotic novel written in the 1950s. Maybe this is the one you're looking for?

[Sarah]

Yes! That's the book! I knew it had a simple title. Why I didn't think of just the number 3 is beyond me.

Thank you so much, Katie!

[K.]

Sarah wrote: "Yes! That's the book! I knew it had a simple title. Why I didn't think of just the number 3 is beyond me.

Thank you so much, Katie!"

No problem! Glad I could help. :)