Three Widows
Patricia Gibney
507 pages
Bookouture
published February 10, 2023
About the book
She kissed her daughter, turned out the light and entered her own room. Too late to run, she stood frozen as a figure stepped out from behind the door and a hand covered her mouth. Fear was a bomb in her chest ready to explode. Her children. They’d already lost their daddy; they couldn’t lose her too.
When young widow Éilis Lawlor disappears in the middle of the night, with her two little children asleep in their beds, it is a chilling case for Detective Lottie Parker. Since her husband’s tragic death, Éilis is all her children have, and when Lottie sees Éilis’s house keys and phone still lying on the kitchen counter, she is terrified for the vulnerable mother’s safety.
Then Éilis’s broken body is found by a nearby lake, wrapped in an unfamiliar yellow dress, her mouth sealed with duct tape – and Lottie’s worst fears are confirmed. Someone wanted this beautiful widow dead.
Desperate to find the person behind this brutal crime, Lottie discovers that Éilis was a member of a support group for widows. And when Jennifer, a close friend of Éilis’s from the group, is found on a rubbish heap, wrapped in a yellow dress, Lottie vows to get justice.
Lottie dives into Jennifer’s past, and learns that she had lived a reclusive life since her husband died. She hadn’t been seen at work for months and had sheltered inside her immaculate home, only emerging for meetings with the group. But when Lottie questions the other women about Jennifer’s isolation, they claim to know nothing.
Lottie is certain that the remaining widows are hiding something. Can she uncover the truth before another innocent life is lost?
An absolutely gripping and totally addictive thriller that will keep you racing through the pages all night long. Fans of Robert Dugoni, Rachel Caine and Karin Slaughter will devour Three Widows in one sitting!
My Review
I always love seeing the new cover for Patricia Gibney’s books. The monochromatic scene with that pop of color. Always gets my attention. And the books are as good as the cover. Now I know the blurb lists reading in one sitting. I was not able to do that because the book was 500 pages and I never get to sit and read for that long, but if I could I definitely would.
This is the perfect blend of the team solving a crime and having a personal life. Now the personal life bits carry over from book to book as the characters expand and grow, but I think there is enough detail to pick a book up in the middle of the series as I haven’t read them all and still enjoyed this one. As with real life, the team in this one gets distracted some by their personal issues as they try and work together to figure out who keeps killing the women in the widows’ support group. And I really sympathize with Lottie as she is dealing with her mother’s memory issues.
I’m quite good at figuring out the killer long before the end of a lot of books, but to be honest, I didn’t even wager a guess in this one. The complexity and layers kept me from homing in on one suspect for any length of time. A serial killer targeting a widow’s support group, where one member’s husband is missing and not actually dead is this a red herring or is it related? Brutal deaths and not a lot to go on. I enjoyed the team working together to solve the murders.
I was also lucky enough to listen to the audiobook narrated by Michele Moran. Her narration was spot on and I could listen to her accent for forever. She really grounded the story for me. She seamlessly switches from character to character and even to the killer all while not distracting from the plot.
I think anyone who loves crime novels will love this series whether in print or audio. I’m definitely heading out to track down the books I have missed.
Author Bio:
Patricia is the million-copy bestselling author of the DI Lottie Parker series. She yearned to be a writer after reading Enid Blyton and Carolyn Keene and even wanted to be Nancy Drew when she grew up. She has now grown up (she thinks) but the closest she’s come to Nancy Drew is writing crime!
In 2009, after her husband died, she retired from her job and started writing seriously. Fascinated by people and their quirky characteristics, she always carries a notebook to scribble down observations.
Patricia also loves to paint in watercolour and lives in the Irish midlands with her children.
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