Widows Walk

This delightful book about a small town on the Maine coast was published in England in 1984. Only now was it brought across the Atlantic. Why the delay? Maybe because it is not your normal routine American mystery with a middle aged detective who hasn't slept in weeks , forgot to eat for days on end, but gets soused every day. Here we find sheriff Jenkins who believes in educating people by overlooking minor infractions. But where is the borderline to major mayhem? And there is his redneck deputy Wilbur Cox who loves to beat up his wife and anybody in his path. Where is his borderline? Add three delicious young women renting a cottage for the summer; what is their game? Not to forget assorted political heavies; do they have any borderline at all?The answers will surprise you in this tightly written worthwhile book.

WOW! Make sure you can pull your chaise lounge & this summer-reading treat into some shade--you'll need to get out of that hot sun because of the heat in the tightly coiled plot of Widow's Walk.Andrew Coburn's writing is taut. Tense. The language is crisp, tearing right along the perforated line. His characters are so close, they pluck, poke and puncture.Paul Jenkins, Boar Bluff's chief of police, is someone we think we know, but don't. His sergeant, Wilbur Cox, brawn and bloat, is a man we never want to know, but do.The three summering visitors, Joan Weiss, Laura Kimball and Pamela Comeau, ice-sculpture beautiful, shimmer in the reflection of the bloodied East Coast waters, and are witness to Boar Bluff's underbelly as the summer days melt into night and reveal secrets, savvy and slayings.Among the cast of characters who give spring to the coil is the man-child Bud Brown who is "a mistake in his mother's life;" and Skelly, the manly woman who runs the Mobile station whose mother's mantra, when Skelly was but a bit of a kid, was "leave 'em be, Ralph...just leave 'em be" (but Skelly's father didn't let 'em be) and who later sought safety in the grown-up body Mother Nature gave her to hide in; then there's Hazel Cox whose strength lies covered up like a dormant volcano. And the coils heat up in this sunny New Hampshire town.Andrew Coburn's Widow's Walk is not a plot with character. It is characters with plot, and those characters--complex, ironic and layered--irk, beckon and repel. They pluck at you. Poke at you. Punctuate the summer days so real that you feel like you are a caught, sweating Peeping Tom.But you can move to the shade... I'd highly recommed this sizzler!