Widows Revenge – Lynda La Plante

WIDOWS was the TV thriller that took fledgling screenwriter LaPlante into the mainstream, paving the way for the classic Prime Suspect and a host of other crime hits.

The story of four gangsters’ wives who unite to carry out their dead husbands’ planned heist was a great concept, an ingenious story and gripping, gritty viewing.

LaPlante then turned to prose, novelising series like Widows as well as writing many original bestsellers. And most recently she adapted Widows for the big screen, transplanting the storage America.

Maybe that cave her the idea of returning to her original British characters, decades after their first appearance, for this sequel.

In the original book Dolly, Linda, Shirley and Bella pulled off the robbery, but one of their husbands – is still alive.

In this second book Harry Rawlins isn’t going to settle for just getting the money he’d planned to grab: he really, really wants the women to pay.

They realise they have to fight just as dirty as this unscrupulous killer simply in order to survive, let alone live on easy street.

It’s not always a good thing to return to past glories – particularly when they’re so far in the past – but LaPlante has the skill to create something worth reading..

But she’s been here before – two decades ago there was a Widows sequel called She’s Out - and I just couldn’t get into this story.

I couldn’t care for characters that were really very much of the 80s and 90s.