![]() The rotating points of view work in tandem with a cleverly constructed timeline: the book opens with the aftermath of Glen's 2010 death, then drops back to Bella's 2006 disappearance and the opening of the investigation. The real mystery is the nature of the widow: Is she an innocent victim, a colluder, an instigator, or just someone with the bad luck to be married to a victim of misguided police work? Waters is quick-witted and resourceful, not unkind but slightly ruthless in pursuit of a splashy story. Approaching retirement, he feels outshone by younger and better-educated colleagues. Sparkes, true to fictional type, is methodical and dedicated. Her voice shares the book in more or less rotating chapters with the third-person storytelling from the respective points of view of two seasoned professionals in the crime business, Detective Inspector Bob Sparkes and tabloid reporter Kate Waters. In Fiona Barton's "The Widow," Jean's opaque point of view (Is she as naive and mentally dormant as she makes out? Is she intentionally hiding information, lacking insight, neither or both?) is presented in first-person narrative. When he fell fatally into the path of a bus, Glen had already spent years as the high-profile prime suspect in the abduction and presumed murder of 2-year-old Bella Elliot, whose disappearance has been a television and tabloid staple. ![]() At the time of her husband's death, she is a fortyish hairstylist in London's south suburbs, married since she was 19 to the late and unlamented Glen. ![]()
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