In this comedic novel, Bruce Graham infuses laugh-out-loud moments with poignant revelations about the lives of three women. Mable and Emma are lifelong friends and Valerie is a much younger acquaintance who welcomes the break from her routine job at the lawyer’s office when she helps them move the body of Mable’s newly dead husband Earl. Of course, they know moving a body is against the law, but they do it anyway – sudden death is stressful and it sets off in Mable dramatic change and a new self-awareness.
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.