Ellen Crease, Oregon State Senator, former crack shot and policewoman, is found holding her dead husband's body in her arms while an intruder lies dead on the floor nearby. Her husband, Lamar Hoyt had a history of running around on his wives and then trading them in on a new model as the old one became tiresome. His son hated him for not giving him a bigger piece of the Undertaking business that had created the family fortune.

A new and relatively inexperienced, but brilliant, Judge is assigned the case after having been newly transferred to the homicide rotation. Judge Quinn is idealistic and in love with the law ... maybe more so than his wife who wants power and money more that Judge Quinn appears to. A subplot takes place when Judge Quinn travels to an island for a convention only find at the last minute that his wife cannot accompany him. She has been tricked into making another trip so that Judge Quinn can be seduced on his trip by a call girl who is eventually killed. The judge proves to be naive and gullable.

The book begins with the fact that Ellen Crease did shoot her husband. It has more than enough characters to be somewhat confusing, but the suspense is sustained by the fact that we don't know WHY Lamar Hoyt died until we reach the end. And then we find out about the mystery bad guy. Read the book. This doesn't make five starts, but it's a good read.

This is an exciting and well written mystery, with a couple of flaws. The story is of a judge who presides over a murder case with political ramifications. His marriage is shaky as the book begins, and there is a plot by some people with interests in the case to capitalize on his marital problems by setting him up and blackmailing him. The plot is complex and interesting enough to maintain the interest of most mystery fans, but there are a couple of problems. Probably the main problem is that I knew the guilty party almost immediately, purely on the basis of the political philosophies of the characters [and I'm being deliberately vague here to avoid giving things away]. When a book is as predictably politically correct as that, it is a major drawback. Secondly, as many other reviewers have mentioned, the plot to blackmail the judge was so transparent that it is inconceivable that anyone smart enough to be a judge would not have seen through it.

Neither of those problems prevented me from enjoying the book. They just caused me to feel some annoyance when the book was finished. As is so often the case, I want more flexibility in Amazon's rating system, and would have given it three and a half stars if that were allowed. So read this book, but don't expect a masterpiece.

read" authors after reading "Gone, But Not Forgotten" and have enjoyed reading his entire collection. Margolin's maturity as a fiction writer is evident when you go back to "Heartstone" and read his works consecutively.

I do think, however, that Margolin's recent efforts have been slightly less enjoyable than the previous. "Gone But Not Forgotten" was a 10, "After Dark" was excellent too, I gave it a strong 9. "The Burning Man", while good, was not up to the previous two novels standards and I rated it an 8. Now comes "The Undertaker's Widow".

Do not misunderstand me, it is an enjoyable read with several plot twists - actually, too many in my opinion. It is as if Margolin was trying his best to create scenarios where anybody could have "done it". It is like one of those books where you create your own ending - one could re-write the ending of this book several different ways with different characters being the "culprit" and not compromise the integrity of the story line.

Mr. Margolin, it WAS a good read, but we expect more!