Lyons’ The Next Widow features Police Detective Jericho and ER Doctor Leah Wright, appropriate because the author herself is an ER doctor. It opens with a fantastic opening scene as Leah comes home to find her entire world torn apart in a maelstrom of blood and despair. You can feel her anguish and shock as she deals with the ensuing situation. It’s then a mystery as to who ripped her world to shreds and whether it’s over or there’s more to come. Dr. Wright has a backstory of estrangement and abandonment from her hippie mother. Detective Jericho has his own demons in the form of his drug addict sister.
After the high-octane pace of the opening scene, the pace slows down quite a bit and the investigation leads in different directions and suspicions fall upon everyone, even Leah. Also, there seems to be no where safe for her.
The resolution of this situation isn’t necessarily resolved as cleanly as the exciting opening scene. In fact. The whole plot is unnecessarily complicated, but certainly foreshadowed in so many different ways.