The Self-Made Widow - Suburban Dicks #2

 

 

 

The Self-Made Widow is a very funny black comedy and the second Suburban Dicks mystery by Fabian Nicieza. Released 21st June 2022 by Penguin Random House on their G.P. Putnam's Sons imprint, it's 400 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

A lot of people whose jobs rely on the written word wrongly consider crime fiction low hanging fruit. It's not quite intellectual they say, it's often outrè, badly written (they say), well, this author would beg to differ. This is a well constructed mystery with a (huge) ensemble cast, and the plot arc, resolution, and denouement are well controlled, if frenetic. Sometimes the humor reminded me faintly of Ben Aaronovitch or Fowler's Bryant & May books with a subtle complexity reminiscent of the more cerebral and classic Americans like Stout and Woolrich. The mystery and frenetic pace weren't -quite- up to the same standards as the first book, but it was still a great example of humorous murder mystery.

The word that keeps popping up in my head is clever. This is a cleverly constructed puzzle. The main character is hysterically deadpan-funny but also really really clever. She's head-and-shoulders smarter than most of the rest of the people in the room, whatever room she's in at the moment, but she's not above making slyly sarcastic cracks which often fly above the heads of the people she's talking to. She teases apart the hidden motives and solution to the crimes and does it between shuttling her kids to soccer practice.

As the second book in the series, it works much better read in order, after the first book. This is especially since the events in the first book are referred back to quite heavily in this book and also because the two main characters, Andie (former FBI profiler and soccer mom) and Kenny (journalist) aren't as appealing and sympathetic in this outing. 

Four stars. One for fans of sarcastic humor in their mystery reads.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.