Arts & Entertainment

'The Other Woman' Comes to Danvers on Thursday

Author and television investigative reporter Hank Phillipi Ryan will appear at the Peabody Institute Library in Danvers on Thursday night at 7 p.m.

Once again, “the other woman” has been in the headlines in recent days.

And on Thursday, television reporter Hank Phillipi Ryan brings her fiction tale of “The Other Woman” to the Peabody Institute Library in Danvers.

It’s Ryan’s latest mystery and the first in a new series.

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Ryan said that her Thursday evening presentation would focus on “mysteries, television and the mysteries of television.”

Ryan is well known as a general assignment and investigative reporter of WHDH-TV channel 7 for the past 30 years. She released her first fiction mystery novel five years ago.

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Her latest novel started when Ryan was reading a news account of former South Carolina Mark Sanford’s extramarital affair with an Argentine mistress.

“You can choose you sin but you can’t choose your consequences,” Sanford’s ex-wife Jenny was quoted as saying.

While story of General David Petraeus’ extra marital affair with Paula Broadwell is in the headlines this week, there’s been no lack of real life tales in the past few years.

“It’s Shakespeare, it really is,” Ryan said.

Ryan submitted her book to publishers as the Arnold Schwarzenegger scandal broke, and there has also been the Anthony Weiner scandal and the John Edwards trial, she said.

Ryan said she’s been thinking about the motivation of “the other woman” in extra-marital affairs for many years.

“It got me thinking about someone would be the other woman,” Ryan said.

Plus, the thinking if the man has gone into the book too, noting that an affair by a high-profile man ruins his life and “ruins the life of everyone who touches you.”

In the past week, Ryan has been thinking about the decision-making process of Broadwell, she said.

“What was it that she wanted?” Ryan asked.

Petraeus was one of the “most respected and trusted” people in the country and Broadwell looks to be a “quintessentially predictable, scheming woman.”

“If you created her nobody would believe you,” Ryan said.

It may come from the quest to have “proximity to power” what can be intoxicating,” Ryan said.

“What did each of them think the end result would be?” Ryan said.

While there is no evidence that national security was compromised by the Broadwell affair, Ryan’s mind races thinking about the implication of the relation if Broadwell was a spy.

“The Other Woman” is the first in a  It has been on the Boston Globe best sellers list for three weeks and has been named one of the best books of 2012 by Suspense magazine, among other honors.

Ryan’s book will be available for purchase and signing.

The event starts at 7 p.m. and is free and open to the public.


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