Black Widow by Chris Brookmyre

Posted on the 14 June 2020 by Booksocial

We catch up with Jack Parlabane as we review Black Widow.

Black Widow – the blurb

Diana Jager is clever, strong and successful, a skilled surgeon and fierce campaigner via her blog about sexism. Yet it takes only hours for her life to crumble when her personal details are released on the internet as revenge for her writing.

Then she meets Peter. He’s kind, generous, and knows nothing about her past: the second chance she’s been waiting for.

Within six months, they are married. Within six more, Peter is dead in a road accident, a nightmare end to their fairytale romance.

But Peter’s sister Lucy doesn’t believe in fairytales, and tasks maverick reporter Jack Parlabane with discovering the dark truth behind the woman the media is calling Black Widow…

Mr Parlabane

I had met maverick reporter Jack Parlabane by chance when doing a blog tour for the very good Fallen Angel last year. Intrigued to find this character didn’t only appear in another book by Brookmyre but a whole series of them I set about adding one or two to my TBR pile. Black Widow was the first that made it although it’s not the first in the series (Quite Ugly One Morning takes that title). I didn’t feel excluded by the fact I was reading book number 7, any necessary back story was made clear and then moved on from.

Black Widows

Everybody knows that black widow spiders are extremely venomous and eat their mates right? Well that was the concept for Brookmyre’s Black Widow. Surgeon Diane Jager marries IT geek Peter within 6 months of meeting him. When his car goes off the road 6 months later and he is presumed dead something just doesn’t add up and Parlabane is tasked with finding out what it is. The finger points to Jager with a hatred of IT techies and realisation her marriage is not what she thought it was.

What follows is a tightly woven plot. You know you are not seeing the whole story as Parlabane investigates Jager’s checkered past. Yet something has you strangely routing for this cold, revenge hunting, scalpel wielding woman. Brookmyre shows us the flip side to the controlling, money grabbing bitch the press paint her as. He also shows us just what exactly she is capable of. The jury is definitely still out as you make it to the final moments of the book. It could go any way and it does, it does.

More please

I’m so pleased I hunted down more Brookymore/Parlabane, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I have Boiling a Frog sitting in my TBR and off the strength of Black Widow, others may very well follow soon.