Widow's Secret

Brian Thompson was born in London in 1935 and now lives in Oxford. He has written two award-winning volumes of memoir: Keeping Mum (2006), winner of the Costa Prize for Biography and the PEN/Ackerley Prize, and Clever Girl (2007), longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize.

"The Widow's Secret drops us headfirst into the realm of 19th-century sensation fiction - the lurid stuff of Wilkie Collins and old-fashioned penny dreadfuls. Although Brian Thompson is best known for his recent memoirs he's equally convincing on murder, mystery and the Victorians. As the curtain-raiser for a new detective series, this novel is a bold beginning. Thompson is clearly having the time of his life here. He revels in the vigilante justice, ribald talk and Dickensian grotesques at his disposal" Sunday Telegraph "A neo-Victorian yarn that rattles on merrily and rings true. We are told that more instalments of Bella's exploits are on the way. Let them come, say I" -- John Sutherland Financial Times "Thompson specialises in sharp, elliptical dialogue and brisk little glances into the murk that rises beyond Bella's window" -- D. J. Taylor Guardian "Brian Thompson writes well and there's a rich vein of humour" Daily Mail "Entertaining, indeed dazzling. Dickensian in its humour, its vivid evocation of a criminal underworld, and the poverty and filth of the Victorian city" Times Literary Supplement