Rating: 5/5
Review:
An excellent read
I thought this was an excellent thriller. Twenty years ago someone gave me a copy of
Quite Ugly One Morning, I didn't like it all that much and haven't read any
Brookmyre since, which was clearly an error because he has become a very good
writer indeed.
Black Widow (it's a pity the title is such a cliché) is a
clever, involving psychological thriller.
It involves the death in a road accident of a recently married IT
worker, although the body is never found, and the subsequent growing suspicions
that not all is as it seems and that his wife, surgeon Diana Jager, may have
murdered him. To say more would be to give away more than I would have liked to
know before reading it, but I found it a real page-turner which gripped me
early on and didn't let go until the final pages.
Brookmyre writes very well; he builds an excellent
atmosphere of tension, there are fairly laid clues and some clever
misdirection, too, which all made it a very enjoyable read. I also found it far more subtle than I
expected, with penetrating and insightful portraits of the main
characters. Diana is especially well
done; the third person narrative is intercut with first person accounts by her
for reasons which become apparent late on in the book. There are also very good minor characters,
like the two young police officers who first attend the accident.
In a market which is very crowded with crime fiction, much
of it very good, I think this stands out as an especially good example, and I
can recommend it very warmly.
(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)
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