About:
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.
Review:
Thank you to Netgalley for allowing me to read and review this excellent book.
With the Lottie Parker series being new to me, starting on Book 12 I did wonder if I would find it confusing.
Patricia Gibney writes so well that this story stands alone and I soon learnt who Lottie is. A detective with a no holds, no bones approach, brash and forthright, not sure I liked her but I sure as hell didn’t dislike her. It was obvious she was going to get results no matter her methods.
Three Widows is gripping, a page turner you can’t put down. The murders are pretty gruesome but I actually found them easy to read about, which for someone like myself who loves thrillers but at times struggles with gruesome stands testament to Gibneys writing.
Lottie thunders through the story, leaving her team with no option but to follow her, and SOCO dismayed at her approach, but time is of the essence and saving lives was paramount.
There are no red herrings but the death of two men who seem totally unrelated to the Life after Loss group throws you off kilter.
It wasn’t until three quarters of the way through the story, after dissecting the characters in my mind that I came up with who I thought the killer was. I was right, but not before Gibney who must have been thinking the same, once again throws us off the scent and sends Lottie and her team down a path looking into Owen, Frankie, Kathleen and Madeline.
But cleverly the killer was always hiding in plain sight.
