The Widow's Secret

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 glorious heroine

John Harvey

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

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

Thompson specialises in sharp, elliptical dialogue and brisk little glances into the murk that rises beyond Bella's window

D. J. Taylor, Guardian