Born in Cambridge, Fiona currently lives in Sussex and south-west France. Her second novel, The Child, was a Sunday Times bestseller. Penguin Random House’s multi-cast production of The Widow is expertly narrated by Hannah Curtis as The Widow, Nicolas Guy Smith as The Detective, Mandy Williams as The Reporter, reading the three main roles. Fiona Bartons debut, The Widow, was a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller and has been published in 36 countries and optioned for television. Though the charge is dismissed for lack of evidence, his death freshens interest in the case, and the focus falls-not surprisingly-on the woman who knew him best. The Widow is not fast paced but a good psychological study and surprised me in the end, satisfying this reader. Because by the time he meets his fate, the Taylors have become pariahs, hounded by the tabloids and shunned by their neighbors for the crime Glen has been accused of: abducting a ponytailed blond toddler named Bella from her front yard to satisfy his secret sexual urges, hidden until then in the dimmest corners of the Internet. Glen Taylor is clever and handsome and fit and, by the end of page 3, flattened by an oncoming bus: “He was there one minute, giving me grief about what sort of cereal I should have bought,” Jeanie marvels, “and the next, dead on the road.” It may have been an accident, but nobody (including his outwardly grieving spouse) is sad to see him go. The British novelist’s third offering, The Suspect, deserves equal success. The titular widow is Jeanie Taylor, a childless fortysomething housewife who has spent most of her adult life in the margins, a meek little moon orbiting her much shinier husband. Fiona Barton’s first two novels, The Widow and The Child, were international bestsellers.

The widow fiona