The Oxford Widows Murder Club

by Bruce Graham

The Oxford Widows Murder Club is about secrets and what happens when they are and aren’t revealed. How did Earl, that nimble dancer and carver of wooden birds, wind up dead? How well did Valerie, pining for answers about her past and for some enlivening excitement, know him? How will Emma – who once sang in local country and western bands and is usually steady and practical – react when she finds out the idyllic childhood she thought she and Mable shared was, in fact, not at all as it seemed for her best friend?
This is ultimately the story of three women who discover the real meaning of friendship as they bond over Earl’s death. Graham’s novel provides readers with his customary astute perception of life in a small town where the gaping sinkhole seems a metaphor for Mable’s wildly changed life. Other oddball characters include the arrogant Mrs. Robert Moss, determined to wrest control of the church group’s dessert table from Mable; the thoroughly professional Sergeant Frost of the RCMP, who finds Mrs. Gibson is too much like his mother; and Walter Horatio Simpson, that octogenarian sleeping tiger of a lawyer who just may surprise them all when he makes it to court.

Genres: Fiction, Canada

Kindle Edition

Published July 1, 2022

Reviews

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

I knew going into this book that it wasn’t necessarily my cup of tea, but I met the author, Bruce Graham, and always admired him as a popular newscaster here in Nova Scotia. I bought the book for my mother, but she read it quickly and liked it enough to give it back to me to read. So I did, I don’t question my mother. Haha. I liked that the novel was set in my town, Oxford, but that also provided me with one of my complaints. I wanted more local color in the description and the places that the characters visited. I could have easily replaced the name Oxford with some other name and not known the difference (except for mention of the infamous sinkhole). I was also disappointed that not all of the questions that the book put forth got answered, and felt some of those concerns were injected into the plot just for the sake of doing so.