4 Page-Turning Novels to Pick Up Now
These new books are packed with suspense and plot twists. Hang on!
By Dawn Raffel
3 of 4
The Widow
By Fiona Barton
336 pages;
NAL
This twisty tale opens with a mesmerizing if unreliable
narrator—Jean Taylor, the seemingly naïve widow of a criminal. Jean's
former husband, Glen, enjoyed what she calls "nonsense"—i.e.,
online child porn. But when Kate Waters, a tabloid reporter, manipulates Jean
into giving an exclusive interview, a more complicated picture of their
marriage emerges. We learn that while Jean's husband was in jail awaiting
trial, she was utterly clueless. Instructed by the police to open his computer
for them, she had no idea how to do it. "The screen lit up, but then
nothing happened and they asked me for the password.I told them I didn't even
know there was a password." Informed by the cop that there are
"terrible" pictures of children on the machine, she insisted that,
"Glen couldn't have put them there." Yet four years later, after her
husband's acquittal on a procedural error and his subsequent death, it turns
out that Jean also has a secret—one
that will blow your mind. "I look at myself in the mirror, try to see if
it shows in my eyes, but I don't think so," says the shifty widow.
— Dawn Raffel
Published 03/02/2016