Washed-up cybersecurity expert Henry North and supremely successful venture capitalist Wei "Adam" Zhang met only in death, their bodies puzzlingly found together in an abandoned warehouse in Austin, TX. Now their widows have joined forces to ferret out their husbands' secrets. A stand-alone from three-time Edgar nominee Abbott; with a 40,000-copy first printing.

What do you do if you get a phone call, apparently from your husband's phone, from someone who tells you that your husband, who supposedly is in New York on business, has just been shot and killed in Austin, Texas? If you're Kirsten North, a professional researcher, you get on a computer and confirm there has been a shooting in Austin. Then you get on a plane to find out if the victim is your husband. But there's an additional detail: there were two shooting victims. The other dead man was a wealthy venture capitalist. According to Kirsten, and to the other man's widow, Flora, the two men did not know each other and had no reason to be together. Kirsten and Flora, a former journalist, join forces to find out why their husbands were killed. Abbott is one of the preeminent writers of thrillers involving ordinary people caught up in unusual and dangerous situations. He's the equal of Harlen Coben and Linwood Barclay, and lately he's been on a roll, with Blame (2017), The Three Beths (2018), and Never Ask Me (2020) featuring some of his best plotting and writing. An Ambush of Widows continues that trend, delivering two irresistible lead characters, a shrewd villain, and a story that defies our expectations. Great stuff.

At the start of this taut thriller from bestseller Abbott (Never Ask Me), Kirsten North, a New Orleans freelance researcher, believes her husband, Henry, a software consultant specializing in computer security, is in New York City on a business trip. Then she gets a call from Henry's phone that's not from him. The indistinct voice, whose gender is unclear, informs Kirsten that Henry has been fatally shot in Austin, Tex., then hangs up. An online search yields a press report that two men were found shot to death in an Austin warehouse two days earlier. Only one victim has been identified: entrepreneur Adam Zhang. Fearing that Henry's killer may have been the anonymous caller, the distraught Kirsten hops the first flight to Austin, unaware that her seatmate is shadowing her. After identifying her husband's corpse in the county morgue, Kirsten begins digging on her own into the baffling tragedy. She later joins forces with Adam's widow, Flora, even though she suspects Flora of being behind the murders. Abbott adroitly shifts perspectives to raise the suspense. Lisa Unger fans will be pleased. Agent: Peter Ginsberg, Curtis Brown. (July)