Monday With Kaye: "The Widow” by Fiona Barton

It is a crime filled Monday as this week Kaye George reviews The Widow by Fiona Barton….

“The Widow” by Fiona Barton

This crime novel meanders between quite a few points of view, and different points in time, but the story is only enriched by the style, never confused. The reader is always eager to get back to the next step.

There is The Widow, who is the central character, of course. Her husband has just died and she’s playing the grieving widow, but we learn immediately that she feels relief because he’s gone and there will be no more of what she calls “his nonsense.”

The story starts in 2010 with the death of the widow’s husband, a man who has been hounded by the police and the press for the last three years because of the crime everyone suspects her husband committed back in 2006, where part of the story also takes place. The detective, DI Bob Sparkes, and the reporter, Kate Waters, give their thoughts on the case, on the suspect, Glen Taylor, and his wife, Jean.

The beautiful child, Bella, has been missing since October of 2006 when she was snatched from her yard while her mother, Dawn Elliot, left her there for what she always insists was just a few minutes. By 2007, Glen Taylor was a serious suspect for her kidnapping. The mother, Dawn, tells part of the story, too. She believes her daughter is still alive after all this time and keeps the story before the public as much as she can. After Glen Taylor is killed in a traffic accident, Dawn and the others despair of ever learning where Bella is, either alive or dead. The only hope is The Widow, who might know something. She does, in fact, know quite a bit more.

The tension and intrigue will take hold of you, draw you in, and not let you go until the climactic end.

Reviewed by Kaye George, author of Eine Kleine Murder, for Suspense Magazine