BLACK WIDOW

Cutting between a courtroom trial and the events surrounding it, you will be racing through to the final tense pages, full of betrayal, revenge and shocking revelations in this Jack Parlabane thriller from the Scottish crime writer. It tells the potent story of a woman who thought she was too late for love, the man who falls for her ambition, and the secret selves that are poised at any moment to end everything. Diana Jager is clever, strong and successful, a skilled surgeon and fierce campaigner via her blog about sexism in medicine. 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, 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 fairy-tale romance, but Peter's sister Lucy doesn't believe in fairy tales, and tasks disgraced reporter Jack Parlabane with discovering the dark truth behind the woman the media is calling the Black Widow. Still smarting from his own relationship wounds after a turbulent divorce, Jack's investigation into matters of the heart takes him to hidden places, both online and off, where most would never dream of having to go. 422pp.