Wicked Widow

Wicked Widow is a historical romance by the American writer Jayne Ann Krentz, published in 2000. It is set in Regency London.

Madeline Deveridge is a widow whose husband died in circumstances that nobody has explained to the satisfaction of fashionable society, and the rumours that she arranged his death and covered it up have followed her ever since. She is known, to the people who talk about her, as the Wicked Widow. Her situation is complicated by something more immediate than gossip: she has become convinced that she and her aunt, to whom she is devoted, are being haunted, and a woman with her reputation has no easy way of asking anyone to look into it. Madeline is determined to establish what is happening in her house without exposing herself to any further talk. The novel belongs to Krentz's romantic suspense writing, in which a courtship is worked out alongside a mystery, and it places a woman with a dangerous reputation in a London of gossip, inheritance and family obligation.

Krentz wrote a number of historical romances in this period under her own name and under others, and this one is among those set in the Regency.