Widows

Ed McBain's long-running series of mystery novels spanned fifty years and over fifty books. Based in the fictional city of Isola (with its eerie similarities to New York), McBain's conscientious cops spent thousands of pages chasing down every sort of villainous behaviour. From 1956 to 2005, readers were introduced to serial killers, money laundering, granny dumping and more. In Widows, something awful again happens to the perpetually-beleaguered Detective Steve Carella. This time, his father is killed. While that investigation (one of the rare cases that the reader follows outside of the 87th) is underway, Carella's squad tackles another murder, as a hormonally-supercharged man has been killed, leaving behind a trail of blond lovers, wives, ex-wives and daughters. Finally, Eileen Burke is joining the city's Hostage Negotation team, in one of the more interesting subplots. Widows is one of the more tonally-interesting books in the series. Horrible things happen to Carella, and the reader is still being exposed to the horrible things that have happened to Eileen. But the murder cases are both best described as darkly comedic. Tense, hysterical laughter; moments of tragic-yet-entertaining self awareness; bizarre characters; and even the occasional puppy. Although nothing 'nice' happens in Widows, McBain manages to infuse the entire book with enough dark comedy to keep the reader from contemplating suicide (as opposed to, say, Calypso or Lightning from the early 1980s).

The writing here is typical of McBain; a brilliant job.

WIDOWS is a criminal novel which begins with the crime scene of a beautiful 22 year old blond girl found murdered in her expensive penthouse.She had been cut by a knife in several different parts of her body.A series of exotic letters had been found in her apartment with no names of the writer mantioned on it. The detectives manage to guess who had written those letters and Arthur Schumacher is found shot onthe road near his apartment building, witnessed by the doorman. It is found out that Arthur and Susan had been having an affair for about 10 months.In succession Arthur's second wife and ex-wife also get murdered by the same person with the same gun.Now it is for the detective-sergents to find out who is behind all these assainations. The other special part of the book is the fact that the author goes into the lives of the detective-sergents also. His focus is not only on the murder but also on the lives of the people involved. A very interesting book to read. Happy Reading!