Blog Tour: The Grass Widow – Vanessa Edwards

Ditched by her married lover Hugh on the day she was made redundant, Leonie plans to make life difficult for Hugh while she searches for a new job. She inveigles her way into his house as a cleaner, intending to plant fake clues to his new liaison for his wife Amanda to find. But instead she discovers real clues to Amanda’s secrets.

Meanwhile, fellow cleaners Brenda and Tina also have hidden agendas as they work: Brenda is counting on a spot of blackmail and Tina is looking for financial information to sell to her dodgy brother-in-law.

At the centre of this web is Amanda’s gardener Simon: handsome, ruthless and plausible, with a shady past and lofty ambitions.

A death in an apparent accident arouses Leonie’s suspicions. Can she put aside her animosity towards Amanda and use her impressive – if sometimes unorthodox – investigative skills to find the truth before someone else dies?

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Vanessa is a solicitor specialising in EU law who has worked in private practice in London and Brussels and for the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

After taking early retirement from the legal profession she turned her hand to fiction.

She lives in Hampstead and likes wine, walking and music of many sorts. And of course reading and writing.

My thoughts: I love a blackly comic novel of revenge and underhand business, and this was exactly that. People often overlook their cleaners and gardeners, forgetting they’re there and that they see and hear everything.

Leonie was made redundant on the same day that her married lover dumped her, so she’s out for revenge, getting a job as his cleaner means she can leave clues that will hopefully get him into hot water with his wife, Amanda…

…who’s having her own affair with Simon the gardener – unfortunately he’s not actually a very nice man, he’s ruthless and keen to get his hands on more than just Hugh’s wife.

Meanwhile Leonie’s fellow cleaners are resorting to criminal means to supplement their small incomes after their crappy partners both leave them high and dry.

Winchester doesn’t strike most as a hot bed of intrigue and crime, but in this book, the cathedral isn’t what we’re here to see. As the cleaners go about their business, legitimate and otherwise, they gather a lot of information about their clients and their goings on, which becomes useful as Amanda’s secret relationship takes a dark turn.

Clever, full of twists and turns, these characters could start a PI agency while cleaning houses, it’s funny and smartly written, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Would love more from these rather brilliant characters and definitely from this writer.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.