I’ve been on a ‘thriller’ kick recently, because I’ve been needing to keep my brain engaged while I’m nursing my three-month-old. These “next Gone Girl”s seem to be sitting well, because they’re mostly interesting enough that I want to keep reading them even when I’m tired and brain-dead. (When I’m all the way tired, though, I’m doing a Dorothy Sayers reread. That’s a lot of fun, and I know the stories well enough that my brain can gloss over bits and I don’t lose out!) The Widow is one […]
If the titular widow lived up to the cover blurb, this would have been a book worth reading
I must have put this on my TBR because I’m a sucker for marketing and this book was supposed to be this year’s Girl on the Train, which was that year’s Gone Girl, and so on it goes by that publishing rule that says that female authors are good for certain things, and right now that thing is “suspenseful books about marriages where things aren’t all that they seem and also there is an unreliable narrator and someone is dead/missing.” I don’t mind how many […]
Obsession
If you are looking for a gritty British detective/mystery novel for the weekend, Fiona Barton’s The Widow is a fine choice. Set in the years 2006-2010, the plot involves Internet chat rooms, child porn and a missing toddler named Bella Elliott. Our main characters are Detective Bob Sparkes, who is obsessed with finding Bella, journalist Kate Waters, who is obsessed with getting the scoop, Glen Taylor, who is obsessed with child porn, and his wife Jean, who tries her best to protect her husband and […]