Black Widow

September 19, 2016
In Brookmyre’s underwhelming seventh thriller featuring Scottish newshound Jack Parlance (after 2015’s Dead Girl Walking), Dr. Diana Jager, who once had a promising surgical career, has moved from London to Inverness, where she has taken a less prestigious job, after her private blog, which railed on sexism in the surgical field, was hacked and her personal details were posted online. Happily, Jager meets IT guru Peter Elphinstone, and after a whirlwind romance, the two wed. Disillusion sets in when Jager finds Elphinstone, who’s allegedly working on a top-secret tech project, to be secretive to the point of shifty. And then six months into the marriage, Elphinstone drives his car off a twisty road into a river. The body is never recovered, and he’s presumed dead; Jager is soon charged with his murder. Elphinstone’s sister asks Parlabane, who’s struggling with his own marital difficulties, to find out what really happened. Despite some intriguing twists, Jager’s story is unremarkable, and Parlabane does little to earn his title as journalist. Agent: Caroline Dawnay, United Agents (U.K.).

Outed as the controversial blogger who targeted sexists in her workplace, surgeon Diana Jager is suspected of murdering her new young husband, leading maverick reporter Jack Parlabane on a circuitous investigation of the couple.Diana, who wrote as Bladebitch, is reputed to be a cold piece of work, though in her first-person narration, she comes across as smart and sympathetic. Swept away by the fun and caring Peter, a computer programmer with whom the lonely Diana enjoys "the best days of my life," she is soon bothered by his aloof presence and secrecy. She learns he is the estranged son of Sir Hamish Elphinstone, a creepy landowner of great wealth. Without the old man's help, Peter is in over his head with investors in his development of a groundbreaking Pay Pal-type software. Was he in an angry state when his car flew off a dangerous bend and plunged into a river--leaving the wreck behind but no dead body? Or did Diana plan the accident? Peter's sister, Lucy, with whom the recently divorced Parlabane develops a mutual attraction, claims the latter. The plot doesn't merely thicken, it turns around and around on itself, leading to a dilly of a climax. It takes forever for Peter's cheating and duplicity to turn Diana on to him. And some of the plotting has a certain connect-the-dots quality--rarely has a protagonist been drugged and abducted to less consequence than Parlabane is here. But the seventh entry in Scottish writer Brookmyre's Parlabane series (Dead Girl Walking, 2015, etc.) is still a consistently gripping read, boasting as much insight into domestic lives as criminal ones.Full of engaging twists, Brookmyre's latest thriller featuring unconventional journalist Jack Parlabane is as compelling as it is clever. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

July 1, 2016
Surgeon Diana Jager embodies the worst stereotypes of her profession: she's a workaholic whose Scottish-hospital colleagues find her terrifying. It doesn't help that at her previous job she was unveiled as Bladebitch, a blogger who mocked hospital personnel mercilessly, especially arrogant IT staff. Nobody's more surprised than Diana when she falls hard for IT worker Peter, and he can't seem to believe his good fortune, either. It gets serious fast, and that's when things go wrong. Peter's car is found crashed, he's missing, and Diana is suspected. Nothing about the case is straightforward, and reporter Jack Parlabane is challenged to determine exactly what the crime was, let alone who's responsible. Brookmyre's chapters shift perspective among various characters, slowly letting readers into the picture while preserving tantalizing secrets until an ending that offers a completely unexpected twist. The book is slightly overlong and sometimes does too much telling rather than showing. Still, this is overall a compelling and memorable tale for readers of Tana French and those who enjoy the British TV show Happy Valley.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

June 15, 2016

Shining-star surgeon Diana Jager loses everything when she's slammed on the Internet for speaking out about sexism in medicine. Marriage to Peter is a reprieve, but when he's killed in an accident, his sister hires Jack Parlabane to check out Diana's past. Dead Girl Walking was named a Boston Globe best mystery of the year.

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