Although private investigator Tess Monaghan hates matrimonial cases, she hates the idea of being bankrupt even more, so she agrees to look for Mark Rubin's missing family. As far as the police are concerned, there is no sign of foul play. Natalie Rubin simply took her three children and vanished. At first Tess is inclined to agree. While Mark can't imagine why Natalie wasn't happy as the wife of a wealthy furrier, Tess can see plenty of reasons why the woman might have found her marriage suffocating. Natalie had been married young, to a man 12 years her senior. Although her husband didn't limit his beautiful wife's spending, she was expected to account for every penny. And though she'd been raised a secular Jew, Mark admits that he wouldn't have married her if she hadn't agreed to embrace the tenets of Orthodoxy. As Tess digs deeper into the circumstances surrounding Natalie's disappearance, she discovers that Mark has concealed many things, including the fact that he met Natalie while volunteering as a visitor in the prison where Natalie's father is still serving out a sentence for murder -- and that Natalie has been blackmailed by her father in the past. Battling her client for the information she desperately needs, Tess has two allies: an online network of women investigators and Mark's nine-year-old son, who is determined to reunite his family. But even Mark doesn't know that painful secrets he's concealed about his own family are about to explode violently. By a Spider's Thread is a very strong book with no holds barred when it comes to plot or emotion.