Nicci French is the pen name of the married team of Nicci Gerrard and Sean French, known for their psychological suspense novels. Starting with The Memory Game in 1996 through their twelfth, Complicit, in 2009, the team now brings forth a new character to start what promises to be a thoroughly intriguing series in Blue Monday.
Psychotherapist Frieda Klein is a solitary woman who suffers from insomnia that pushes her to walk nights following the course of the ancient London rivers that now run underground. Order matters to Frieda, as she believes the world to be an uncontrollable place, and her personal integrity sets her apart as she gets involved with her patients and helps them to see that what is controllable are their thoughts. Her entire world is interesting, and Auntie M can see this as the start of a compelling series.
Matthew Farraday is a five-year-old who has been abducted. Along with a strong police response, his photograph is splashed regularly across UK papers. When one of Frieda’s patient’s starts having dreams of a child who closely matches Matthew’s description, Frieda cannot ignore the coincidence and turns to Detective Chief Inspector Karlsson for help.
Karlsson is the perfect foil for Frieda; equally intelligent, and just as prickly, his first response is to dismiss her fears–until a connection with an eerily similar unsolved abduction of twenty years ago emerges and Frieda and Karlsson race as the tension builds to find a kidnapper and rescue the child.
The plotting here is meticulous, with extravagant details given to the characters and their lives so that they jump off the page in gritty detail. There is a wealth of raw emotion, too, as people are misunderstood, and the suspense piles on. The twists and turns will keep you turning pages to the stunning ending.
Don’t miss this new start of what promises to be a wonderful series. The second Frieda Klein novel, Tuesday’s Gone, will be published this July, and this reader can hardly wait.
Auntiemwrites Crime-Mystery Author M K Graff 