The story unfold over a span of four years, starting from the time of Bella’s kidnapping to a few weeks after Glen’s death. Did Glen kidnap Bella? And if so, was Jean complicit in the kidnapping? Did she want Bella to be her child? And was Glen’s death really accidental or did Jean actually cause it? We don’t really get to know the answers to these questions until the end of the book. In the meantime, Jean is obsessed with kids but for a different reason - Glen is infertile so she cannot have kids of her own. But there is no conclusive proof, and even though Glen is charged and brought to trial, there is not enough evidence to convict him.
The detective in charge of the case is convinced that he is the man. It takes a lot of digging and investigation to hone in on Glen as the probable suspect. Her husband, Glen, turns out to be a pedophile who may have abducted a two year girl, Bella, from her house. But there’s an entire back story to their marriage that gradually unfolds in the course of the book. The “widow” in the story is Jean, whose husband has just died in an accident. Set in England, The Widow is a debut novel by Fiona Barton, who, I wasn’t surprised to learn, is a journalist, given the fluency and quality of the writing. And a really good one at that – I couldn’t put it down until I had got to the end, to the “bottom of the mystery,” as they would say in our much-beloved Five Find-Outers mystery series by Enid Blyton that we grew up with in India. Contrary to what you would expect this book to be from its title – a tragedy or at least a drama – The Widow is actually a crime thriller.
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