Buy this book
Books N Bytes participates in affiliate programs including Amazon Associates and Bookshop.org. We may earn a commission when you purchase through our links at no extra cost to you.
A Way With Widows puts Carl Wilcox in a different small South Dakota town and into a case that involves three widows in the same community who have each, in different ways, fallen for the same itinerant stranger before he ended up dead in a barn. The investigation is the chassis. The actual interest is in how each of the three women understands what happened.
Adams's prose continues to be the kind of dry, attentive Midwestern voice that has aged better than most of its contemporaries. Carl's observations about the women are sharp without being judgmental, which is harder to write than it looks. The Depression texture is consistent across the series.
Four stars. One of the more emotionally complicated Carl Wilcox entries. Read as part of the longer series.
Related reads
If you liked A Way With Widows
The Ditched Blonde
by Harold Adams
A mid-period Carl Wilcox novel. Harold Adams writing the Depression-era prairie with the kind of dry honesty that the form usually pretends to.
Hatchet Job
by Harold Adams
A mid-period Carl Wilcox mystery by Harold Adams. Depression-era South Dakota, an itinerant sign painter, and a community that knows how to keep its own counsel.
When Rich Men Die
by Harold Adams
When Rich Men Die by Harold Adams 1987 review. The fifth Carl Wilcox Depression-era mystery sends the alcoholic itinerant artist back to Corden, South Dakota for a banker’s murder.
The Winter Queen
by Boris Akunin
The first Erast Fandorin novel. A young clerk in 1876 Moscow investigates an apparent suicide and falls down a labyrinth.
Murder on the Leviathan
by Boris Akunin
Akunin doing locked-room mystery on a Suez-bound steamer in 1878. Multiple narrators, a French detective, and Fandorin in supporting position.
The Turkish Gambit
by Boris Akunin
Fandorin on the Russo-Turkish War. War-correspondent mystery with deep affection for Tolstoy.
More by this author