Tuesday, July 10, 2018

The Silent Widow



A Drug Storm

Bestselling author Sidney Sheldon passed away in 2007, but Tilly Bagshaw continues to write thrillers in his style, so that his name is the main attraction for fans who buy the books.

The Silent Widow is a fast-paced, twisty-turny crime thriller, that has murder, sex, drugs and crime in the right proportion. Dr. Nikki Robert, a therapist, is still grief-stricken by the death of her doctor-philanthropist husband Doug in a car crash, when Lisa, one of her patients, is found brutally murdered with multiple stab wounds—her body shredded so badly that the killer could only be a psychopath. That has not even sunk in, when Nikki’s assistant Trey is found killed in a similar fashion.

Two police detectives, the handsome and well-behaved Lou Goodman, and the fat, rude, racist Mike Johnson, are given the job to investigate. Johnson, who hates the beautiful, stylishly dressed upper class Nikki with an inexplicable passion, is convinced she is the killer, even though his partner reminds him, it does not seem likely.

Then Nikki is attacked, she gets threatening mails; fed-up of the cops’ inaction and hostility, she hires Derek Williams a down on his luck but efficient private investigator. With links to the past, he opens a can of worms that involves drug cartels and corruption in high places.

The writing is workmanlike, but the suspense is maintained till the end, even though the strands are tied up rather too neatly—as if Los Angeles were a one-horse town with just so this many characters all involved in the plot--  and there are laughable scenes like a villain actually explaining everything in detail to a character (to the reader actually!) when  any smart crook would shoot and scoot.  Stuck at home on a rainy day, this would be book to pick up and race through.

The Silent Widow
By Tilly Bagshaw as Sidney Sheldon
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pages: 438


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