Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Winter Widow
    Unavailable
    The Winter Widow
    Unavailable
    The Winter Widow
    Ebook290 pages4 hours

    The Winter Widow

    By Charlene Weir

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    Listen to the audiobook instead

    About this ebook

    Susan Donovan, one of San Francisco's finest, was a semi-hard-bitten cynic about men--until she went to a police convention and Daniel Wren "happened to her." Quickly and somewhat to her amazement, she became Susan Wren, wife of the poice chief in the tiny Kansas town of Hampstead. Then, on a cold winter morning shortly after the wedding, she finds herself Susan Wren, widow: Daniel has been murdered.

    So begins Charlene Weir's The Winter Widow, winner of the St. Martin's Press/Macmillan London "Malice Domestic" contest for Best First Traditional Mystery, an absorbing mystery about a woman out of her element. Although she has no ties to Hampstead, and there is no reason for her not to return to California, as her father urges, Susan has other ideas. She is determined to find Daniel's killer. It takes all her powers of persuasion to win over a reluctant mayor, but in the end he grudgingly agrees. As acting police chief, Susan begins the hunt.

    Soon she finds she needs those powers to persuade herself that she knows what she is doing. She can deal with the town's almost unanimous hostility toward a woman police chief, an outsider from the big city. She can cope--because she must--with further killings. But nine years as a cop on San Francisco's streets haven't equipped her to handle the escape of a truckload of pigs on Hampstead's main drag, a rampaging prize bull, or the agricultural intrigue she encounters. And all the while, the killer is closing in on Susan herself, determined to keep her from learning the truth about her beloved Daniel's tragic death.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateFeb 15, 1992
    ISBN9781466834514
    Author

    Charlene Weir

    Charlene Weir is the author of the Susan Wren series. Born in Nortonville, Kansas, she grew up in Hutchinson, Kansas. After graduating from nurses' training, she attended the University of Oklahoma and worked as a public-health nurse.

    Related to The Winter Widow

    Related ebooks

    Police Procedural For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      London’s Frost Fairs

      Nov 6, 2020

      London’s Frost Fairs
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Mystery Of The Winter Dress

      Mar 23, 2022

      The Mystery Of The Winter Dress
      7 min read

    • Article

      Preliminaries

      May 30, 2022

      Preliminaries
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Founder’s Tomb

      Feb 3, 2020

      IN HIS NATURAL HISTORY, a first-century A.D. book that purports to contain everything then known about the world, the Roman historian Pliny the Elder briefly describes the Decapolis, a region at the Roman Empire’s eastern edge. He notes that, as its

      6 min read

    • Article

      Life In A Busy Oasis

      Apr 11, 2019

      Life In A Busy Oasis
      9 min read

    • Article

      Kitchener

      Oct 14, 2019

      Kitchener
      8 min read

    • Article

      Table Talk

      Sep 1, 2021

      Table Talk
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Straw Hat

      Aug 2, 2018

      The Straw Hat
      6 min read

    • Article

      Crescent City

      Dec 1, 2021

      Crescent City
      5 min read

    • Article

      Marta

      Oct 15, 2019

      Marta
      4 min read

    • Article

      Cristina Rivera Garza

      Jun 15, 2018

      She would remember everything, out of the blue and in full detail. She would see the jade ring wrapped around her ring finger and, immediately, she would see the other jade ring. She would open her eyes wide and, without knowing why, would fall silen

      13 min read

    • Article

      Getting Up

      Oct 15, 2022

      Getting Up
      20 min read

    • Article

      Six Poems

      Nov 1, 2023

      loved best. Words I have neversaid. New sentence, at 80. Of coursenot more than his children, and their children. That goeswithout saying—but I want to lay down eachelement of love’s house. First,the hole, under—apple cellar, potato cellar,cellar to

      5 min read

    • Article

      Cliffhanger

      Sep 1, 2019

      Cliffhanger
      7 min read

    • Article

      Billy Goat Scruff

      Nov 7, 2021

      Billy Goat Scruff
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Ladies Book Club

      Apr 10, 2024

      “Our brains are shaped with the capability to care deeply but also to kill. This deep ambivalence is potentially problematic. A society filled with people who are inherently very compassionate and very violent might prove unstable.”1 1Emile Bruneau,

      25 min read

    • Article

      Practicing

      Mar 15, 2018

      This would have been her favorite season in the Allegheny woods. The shadows of the trees were rickety, and the wind had sap in its scent. But last week, Ty had left; now one day decayed into the next. Their house was abandoned. Only their father, si

      18 min read

    • Article

      Dark Tales

      Dec 2, 2021

      Dark Tales
      6 min read

    • Article

      Anna

      Feb 5, 2018

      Anna
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Bargain

      Dec 10, 2022

      “Which one of you owns G2V3889?” Cygnus glided through a luminescent star field suspended in the center of an otherwise dark, oblong studio, then turned in a slow circle to survey the twenty Agents surrounding him. “Come on, speak up.” Vega shuddered

      16 min read

    Reviews for The Winter Widow

    3/5

    2 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this book. Having a new husband dies "in the line of duty" is tough, taking on his job and finding his killer is even harder, especially when they target you next.

      I'll keep reading this series, Weir makes Kansas feel real and yet gives an outsider view of it (the new Chief of Police is originally from San Francisco, transplanted to her husbands home, a small town in Kansas).
    • 2/5
      First Line: Definite disadvantages to being chief of police, Dan Wren thought as he headed the pickup along the graveled, hilly road past tree-dotted fields with barbed wire fences.Thirtysomething San Francisco police officer Susan Donovan meets the man of her dreams at a conference. Within six weeks, she's married, she's moved to northeastern Kansas with her police chief husband, Dan Wren... and she's a widow. Susan gets herself appointed temporary chief of police and vows to find her husband's killer. When another person dies, the mayor wants her gone, but Susan manages to get a five-day reprieve. Will she find the killer before time runs out?Mysteries set in Kansas are not common, and Weir skillfully guides us through a Great Plains winter, the vagaries of the multi-million-dollar bull sperm business, and a search for a toxic waste dump. All that was interesting and the pace moved right along. What didn't work for me was the main character. It wasn't until the end of the book that I ever felt that Susan had been a police officer on the San Francisco police force. She didn't use her brain; she let her rage and grief take command and lead her into numerous dangerous situations. I tried to take it easy on her, allowing her time to grieve, but sooner or later when a character keeps behaving like the blonde bimbo in a slasher movie, I'm going to hold the basement door open for her the next time there's a weird noise down there.To sum it up: fine setting, good pace, and the murderer was not easy to spot; however, the main character got on my last nerve. Toto, I took the first plane out of Kansas.