Book Review: An Ambush of Widows, by Jeff Abbott
A tech dude and a venture capitalist get shot in a warehouse. Their widows try to find out why.
Grand Central Publishing, 2021, 340 pages
Henry North is a down-on-his-luck cybersecurity expert from New Orleans. Adam Zhang is the cofounder of one of Austin’s most successful venture capitalist firms. These two men didn’t know each other. They had never met. Yet they died together, violently, in a place neither had any business being.
When Henry doesn’t return from a business trip, his wife, Kirsten, panics - and then gets an anonymous phone call: “Your husband is dead in Austin.”
Flora Zhang knew her husband was keeping secrets. She suspected an affair, but she had decided she could forgive him for his weakness - until her husband ended up dead. And with no explanation for her husband’s murder, the police begin to suspect her.
Together, these two widows will face a powerful foe determined to write a false narrative about the murders. In doing so, neither Flora nor Kirsten will remain the women the world thought they were.
Ambush of Widows is a perfectly palatable mystery I picked up for its tech industry connection and Austin setting. But the tech stuff is mostly just gloss over a standard revenge-shenanigans mystery in which the author piles one red herring onto another to keep us going, but I figured out the villain once he revealed the backstory.
Henry North is a cybersecurity freelancer, living in New Orleans with his wife, Kirsten. Kirsten thinks Henry is in New York on business when she gets a sinister phone call telling her her husband is dead in Austin. Click.
After failing to contact her husband, and learning online that two men were just found shot in an Austin warehouse, Kirsten hurries to Austin, and learns that indeed, her husband was found dead in a warehouse with a rich venture capitalist named Adam Zhang. Kirsten spends the rest of the book trying to figure out whodunnit. Eventually she teams up with Adam Zhang's widow, Flora, who unlike the hard-edged Kirsten, was a shy, non-confrontational wife of the domineering Adam.
Starting with the first chapter, we know Kirsten is being stalked by a professional hit man, because we get sections written from his POV. This felt to me like a bit of a "cheat" to inject extra tension into the story with a character who knows more than we do. More of a cheat was unveiling Kirsten's history, bit by bit. We meet her foster brother, Zach, who's now in the employ of an organized crime family, and then get alternating chapters with flashbacks to their teenage years which of course reveal key plot elements that impact the mystery.
I find it a little annoying when an author hides the ball like this. It spoils the puzzle of trying to figure out the mystery along with the characters when the characters aren't revealing everything they know until it's convenient.
The climax does fit everything together with some action and violence. I felt like the pieces all fit and there weren't too many overly convenient coincidences. But this was just an average potboiler of a contemporary mystery.
My complete list of book reviews.
Grand Central Publishing, 2021, 340 pages
Henry North is a down-on-his-luck cybersecurity expert from New Orleans. Adam Zhang is the cofounder of one of Austin’s most successful venture capitalist firms. These two men didn’t know each other. They had never met. Yet they died together, violently, in a place neither had any business being.
When Henry doesn’t return from a business trip, his wife, Kirsten, panics - and then gets an anonymous phone call: “Your husband is dead in Austin.”
Flora Zhang knew her husband was keeping secrets. She suspected an affair, but she had decided she could forgive him for his weakness - until her husband ended up dead. And with no explanation for her husband’s murder, the police begin to suspect her.
Together, these two widows will face a powerful foe determined to write a false narrative about the murders. In doing so, neither Flora nor Kirsten will remain the women the world thought they were.
Ambush of Widows is a perfectly palatable mystery I picked up for its tech industry connection and Austin setting. But the tech stuff is mostly just gloss over a standard revenge-shenanigans mystery in which the author piles one red herring onto another to keep us going, but I figured out the villain once he revealed the backstory.
Henry North is a cybersecurity freelancer, living in New Orleans with his wife, Kirsten. Kirsten thinks Henry is in New York on business when she gets a sinister phone call telling her her husband is dead in Austin. Click.
After failing to contact her husband, and learning online that two men were just found shot in an Austin warehouse, Kirsten hurries to Austin, and learns that indeed, her husband was found dead in a warehouse with a rich venture capitalist named Adam Zhang. Kirsten spends the rest of the book trying to figure out whodunnit. Eventually she teams up with Adam Zhang's widow, Flora, who unlike the hard-edged Kirsten, was a shy, non-confrontational wife of the domineering Adam.
Starting with the first chapter, we know Kirsten is being stalked by a professional hit man, because we get sections written from his POV. This felt to me like a bit of a "cheat" to inject extra tension into the story with a character who knows more than we do. More of a cheat was unveiling Kirsten's history, bit by bit. We meet her foster brother, Zach, who's now in the employ of an organized crime family, and then get alternating chapters with flashbacks to their teenage years which of course reveal key plot elements that impact the mystery.
I find it a little annoying when an author hides the ball like this. It spoils the puzzle of trying to figure out the mystery along with the characters when the characters aren't revealing everything they know until it's convenient.
The climax does fit everything together with some action and violence. I felt like the pieces all fit and there weren't too many overly convenient coincidences. But this was just an average potboiler of a contemporary mystery.
My complete list of book reviews.