Book Review: Black Widow

Black Widow

Black Widows, the spiders, exhibit a unique behaviour called sexual cannibalism, wherein the female eats the male after mating, thus earning them the name "widow spiders." In Chris Brookmyre's Black Widow too, Diana Jager is no easy woman. She is feisty, strong-willed and very vocal on the issue of sexism in the field of medicine, which happens to be her bread and butter. But her life undergoes a complete reversal of sorts when she meets the IT guy Peter. They have a whirlwind romance and within six months, they are married. Even more shockingly, within another six months, Peter dies in a road accident, bringing her life to a standstill. But is she the murderer?

Female-oriented domestic psychological thrillers exploring a dysfunctional, failing marriage have been possibly the order of the day ever since Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl stormed its way into every bestseller list. For we have had The Girl on the Train, Before I Go to Sleep, Disclaimer, and countless other books referencing the titular female protagonist, either as a girl (as noted correctly by NPR) or a widow, like Brookmyre's Black Widow, and yet enough doesn't seem to be enough. The mystery in this case is not just exceptionally knotty to untangle, thanks to its clever non-linear (but circular) narrative that will make you go back to the start to read them again in new light, but also one that's devilishly cunning, piling twist upon twist, before it all ends in a plain shocking denouement.