Mrs. John Dow by Tom Savage
Book Review by Dawn Thomas

282 Pages
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group - Alibi
Release Date: October 6, 2015

Mystery & Thriller, Suspense, Spies

This is the first book in the Nora Baron series. She is relaxing on the widow’s walk of her house overlooking the Long Island Sound. She and her husband have been married more than twenty years and have a daughter, Dana, in college. Their life is idyllic with the occasional worry when her husband Jeff is out of town but for good reason. Jeff is an intelligence officer.

Things turn upside down when she receives a telephone call that her husband Jeff has died in a car accident and must make arrangements to fly to London to identify the body. After visiting the morgue, she is attacked by a purse snatcher in the park. During dinner with a friend, she receives a coded message to meet tomorrow in Paris. She knows instantly Jeff wrote it. What has she gotten herself into and where is Jeff?

The book is written in third person in the past tense. The story is face paced and the characters are developed. If you like mysteries with strong women characters, you will enjoy this book.

This book was reasonably well written, and quite enjoyable to read although there were parts where things became rather unlikely, and you just had to accept that it was a story, not real life.

I wasn't sure what I was going to think of this book as I got started with it, but I loved it! Nora gets a call that her husband has died in a car crash. When she goes to London to identify her body, she starts to realize that all is not as it seems. She becomes embroiled in a dangerous situation, wanted for murder in a foreign country, and on the run.

Nora is a wonderful character, and the storyline kept me on the edge of my seat. I can't wait for more!

Thanks to net galley.com, Tom Savage and Random House Publishing Group-Alibi for the advance copy for my honest review.

Just never got into this one, Savage's writing was good enough to make me finish 'Mrs. John Doe' and glad I did. Having previously read Savage's 'Valentine', was the reason I wanted to read this one.

I just felt that the Craig Elder character, would have been a better choice to have as the main character verse Nora Baron, add in Solange Braure as his partner and still have Nora as a character in the book.

Savage does a decent job with Nora in the lead role, but with her acting skills, it's more like your reading a movie script, watching a movie, too much goes on were he just simply writes it into the storyline verse putting it in the storyline.

With Mrs. John Doe, he wrote an elaborate scheme of predictable trickery. Since Savage gives it away, blink and you'll miss it but think had he wrote it giving you the story of the schemers, your in the lair of evil, and in the end Mrs. John Doe an actress conquers them, it would have been over the top.

The best example is when Craig and Nora, find Solange dead. It make the story better to put the reader in the safe house/apartment when she gets killed and the place searched.

I also think a character like Solange, who is a good agent, willing to sleep with the enemy is intriguing enough to make into a series and it would have been a good one.

I still would recommend a reader to give it a try. Tom Savage is a decent writer, definitely worthy of having readers giving his books a try and Valentine is my favorite book from him

Nora Baron is an actress, teacher, mother, and the wife of a CIA agent. When she receives a distressing phone call informing her of her husband’s death, she rushes to England. Soon she embarks on her own investigation into what really happened that will lead her into a deadly cat-and-mouse game with some very dangerous people who are just as determined to keep the truth about her husband hidden.

Mrs. John Doe by author Tom Savage is a fast-paced suspense-filled novel full of twists and turns and dangers around every corner. It does require a fairly strong suspension of disbelief since the story often seems to veer towards the incredible as an untrained woman takes on trained spies and assassins but, hey, that’s part of the allurement of these kinds of books. Overall, it is a whole lot of fun and Nora makes a strong, independent, and interesting protagonist.

3.5

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review