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Jack Parablane's occupation's gone and he's desperate to retrieve it. Jack, an investigative journalist, finds himself without serious work in the wake of a triple series of blows. There was the Leveson inquiry, which cast a cold, hard light on journalistic ethics and generated general cynicism regarding newspapers. Then there is the rise of social media as primary sources of news, which, if they pay at all, will not support genuinely investigative and very expensive journalism. And finally, there is Jack's own history, including being once busted for burglary. Still, as readers familiar with his prior exploits know, he is not one to give up without a fight. So when first the sister of Peter Elphinstone, missing and presumed dead, and then Diana Jager, Peter's presumptive widow, each implore him to find out what actually happened to Peter, Jack cannot resist. Elphinstone, after all, is the scion of a distinguished, if dysfunctional, Scottish family and Diana is about to be tried for his murder. The combination is compelling and Jack sees a chance to get back into the big time.
At the time of his disappearance Peter and Diana had been married for half a year. She is a consulting surgeon and formerly held a prestigious post in London. But while there, she also published a blog as "Scalpelgirl" that exposed misogyny in hospital culture. In one unfortunate post, she ridiculed hospital IT techs and one, at least, did not forgive her. Her account was hacked, she was outed, her personal details revealed. It was as individually disastrous for Diana as perhaps the "basket of deplorables" remark was for Hillary. She lost her position in London and fled north to Inverness where she took another surgical posting and licked her wounds.
It was here that she met Peter, the man she had long since despaired of ever finding. They marry within six months and after another half a year, Diana is a widow. Peter appears to have gone off the road and into a river, but when the car is pulled out, he is not inside it. Indeed, his body is never found. In the end (actually, at the beginning of this cleverly constructed novel), Diana is on trial for his murder. She turns to Parblane because, as she tells him, "You alone will discover the secret of what happened to my husband."
A bare-bones outline of the characters and plot of BLACK WIDOW will remind the reader inevitably of the recent spate of currently fashionable he said-she said narratives. Diana Jager, who tells her own version of events, is certainly an unreliable narrator. Peter does not get first-person treatment but still has a sufficient number of peculiarities about him to make him dubious. Jack Parablane, acting for Diana, thinks she is probably guilty of murder. He is after a story, not on a crusade on behalf of the unjustly condemned. But Chris(topher) Brookmyre is an old pro and an accomplished technician. He makes it all work in a plot that, with one minor distraction, will entangle the reader from beginning to end.
I've been keeping a delighted eye on Jack Parablane from the very beginning. For those who have not, Jack began as an extravagant hero, larger than life, endlessly resourceful, especially when it came to human faeces. Middle age has caught up to him at last and in the books that Fowler signs, at least in the UK, as "Chris," he leads a far more restrained existence. While I regret the loss of young Jack Parablane, I accept that he could not go on that way forever and so I am happy to follow him in his somewhat more decorous existence. And so should you be too.
§ Yvonne Klein is a writer, translator, and retired college English professor who lives in Montreal. She's been editing RTE since 2008.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, December 2016
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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