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Blue Monday: A Novel
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Blue Monday: A Novel
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Blue Monday: A Novel
Audiobook11 hours

Blue Monday: A Novel

Written by Nicci French

Narrated by Beth Chalmers

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

The stunning first book in a new series of psychological thrillers introducing an unforgettable London psychotherapist

Frieda Klein is a solitary, incisive psychotherapist who spends her sleepless nights walking along the ancient rivers that have been forced underground in modern London. She believes that the world is a messy, uncontrollable place, but what we can control is what is inside our heads. This attitude is reflected in her own life, which is an austere one of refuge, personal integrity, and order.

The abduction of five-year-old Matthew Farraday provokes a national outcry and a desperate police hunt. And when his face is splashed over the newspapers, Frieda cannot ignore the coincidence: one of her patients has been having dreams in which he has a hunger for a child. A red-haired child he can describe in perfect detail, a child the spitting image of Matthew. She finds herself in the center of the investigation, serving as the reluctant sidekick of the chief inspector.

Drawing readers into a haunting world in which the terrors of the mind have spilled over into real life, Blue Monday introduces a compelling protagonist and a chilling mystery that will appeal to readers of dark crime fiction and fans of In Treatment and The Killing.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateMar 1, 2012
ISBN9781101538685
Unavailable
Blue Monday: A Novel
Author

Nicci French

Nicci French is the pseudonym of English wife-and-husband team Nicci Gerrard and Sean French. Their acclaimed novels of psychological suspense have sold more than sixteen million copies around the world.

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Reviews for Blue Monday

Rating: 3.724705857882353 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book pulled me in from page one and I had a difficult time putting it down. Finished it in two days. the authors have done an excellent job weaving a plot that kept me guessing until the very end. I enjoyed Frieda's character and found her interactions with Detective Karlsson most interesting. Hard to say more without giving something away. Great psychological thriller!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    All these reviews about the twist at the end. Should have seen it coming. Thought I did. But NO! I cannot remember the last time I read a book and found my hand involuntarily at my mouth. Which means awesome.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Frieda Klein, psychotherapist, becomes concerned when one of her patients reveals fantasies that seem to tie in with the abduction of 5-year-old Matthew Faraday. As she gradually gets sucked into the investigation of the abduction, she has to deal with the dilemma of whether her priority should be the safety of the child or her professional duty to her patient.

    It was hard to get involved in the story. Once it eventually kicked off it became more interesting, although as much as I like a bit of scene-setting I got really tired of reading page after page after page after page describing the streets. While still enjoyable this would have to be my least favourite Nicci French book, and I really don't know if I could be bothered to read the seven more books planned about the same not-particularly-interesting main character when nothing much really happens for half the story.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Whoa!! What a great book! Just when you think you have it all figured out...you find out you really don't have a cliue!!! Blue Monday is the first in a series featuring psychiatrist Freida Klein. She takes on a strange man as a patient who ttells her his vivid fantasies about wanting a child - a boy. When a boy fitting the same description as the one ion his dreams goes missing, her client becomes a suspect. The story twists and turns from there. Gripping and suspenseful, I could not put it down! I can't wait to read more of Nicci French's books!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I am a little torn about this book. I loved the setting, the way the author (in fact two authors - husband and wife) described London, especially the parts you would never see as a tourist. The first chapter, telling about an abduction of a little girl more than twenty years ago was quite catching. Then the author starts to introduce the main characters - and there are many of them, so the book gets a little slow. Some of the events seem to be almost unrelated and the main character, Frieda Klein, a psychologist with personal problems, is not entirely believable all the time - and I have problems accepting that a layperson - okay, a psychologist in this case, which partly explains it - helping the police solves the case much faster and better than the police.
    On the other hand, the characters were well drawn, the case was interesting - although I had some problems with the twin issue. I know that there seems to be a bond between identical twins, even when they are not raised together and that their lifes tend to have a lot of similarities - but some of the stuff in this novel was hard to believe.
    I liked the book and will read the sequels - in fact I already read the second book of the series before the first (not a great idea in this case - too many spoilers).
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I have long been a fan of the husband and wife writing team that is known as Nicci French but up to now I have stuck to their stand-alone thrillers. I am excited to have now started their series about psychotherapist Frieda Klein. Blue Monday gets this series off to a stellar start. A dark, complicated story with a troubled, interesting main character and a gut wrenching plot about children made this book an intense read.The book opens with a trip to the past, on a day in 1987 when a little girl called Rosie Vine and her younger sister, Joanna are on their way home from school. Rose is both resentful of having her younger sister trailing along behind her, and preoccupied with thoughts of their stop at the local sweet shop. Rosie gets to the shop first, but Joanna never arrives. She has vanished. Now some twenty two years later, another child has been taken in a similar manner. Dr. Frieda Klein is treating a troubled man and some of the things he says brings her to believe that he is somehow involved with the missing child. She feels she has no other choice but to report this to the police.These authors excel at writing psychological thrillers. The words, plot and atmosphere are dark, haunting and suspenseful. There are a number of story-lines that are developed over the course of the book and not all have been resolved by the end so the reader is left wanting more. I get a sense that the authors are going to develop Frieda slowly. She is a solitary, prickly, difficult woman but she is starting to let some people into her life and I look forward to seeing how this group evolves over the course of the series and learning more about Frieda and her secrets.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    this book. held my attention throughout the whole story. the twists it took were worth not getting anything done!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    2.5* rounded up for this audiobook edition.

    This book was the first Nicci French I have read & I ended up disappointed. The first half was okay but as the book progressed, Frieda (and indeed the police) did some incredibly foolish things. For me the worst was when knowing that her client Stephen was a twin (a fact he himself had been unaware of) and that this twin was a man potentially involved in a pair of child abductions, both she & the police don't question which twin returns from their final meeting. That was so obvious to me!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I had preveiously read a few of the Frieda Klein novels in this series and decided to purchase the entire set and start with the first novel this weekend. As I suspected I would, I read all eight novels this weekend back to back. I love the characters, love the setting.Loved the ending of the last novel, "Day of the Dead". It was everything I had hoped for.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Took awhile to get interesting and I guessed every single twist early on in the book but it was still pretty good.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I requested this book from Netgalley, because the cover kind of drew me in. It's dark, mysterious and deep. Just like the book was.

    I haven't read any books from this author, but I can safely say that she is really good. I loved the descriptions, the narrative, the voices. I loved the dialogues, the story and the action. It was all combined in a very good way.

    What I didn't like were the many viewpoints that felt scattered. There were some times just a couple of sentences from a viewpoint and there was no switch indication. So, I was reading from one perspective and the next second I was in someone else's head. It got confusing. Another thing that didn't work for me was that the prologue started the mystery, then nothing happened toward its solving for the next 30-40% of the book. I'm not saying that those 30% were bad or not interesting. They were just going in a totally different direction.

    I suppose it was all well thought out and planned, because in the end everything came in place. It's all acted out and revealed. Just in the moment of reading, it felt confusing and scattered.

    The characters:
    *Freida - she's a loner, who loves being by herself, undisturbed in her own little house, in her own world. She is afraid of getting close to people and prefers to live at a certain distance even from her own family. The only thing that gets her going are her patients with their mind problems that Frieda tries to solve. It's when she starts to meddle with one particular patient's mind that things get a little out of hand. But it was kind of awesome that Frieda never lost her cool. There was this one mistake she made which almost proved fatal for Matthew Faraday, an abducted 5-year old, but truth is that given the circumstances I couldn't really blame her.

    *Inspector Karlsson - Ah, he was such a sweetheart. Through the whole book I felt like he was the proper match for Frieda. He had character and showed love, care and devotion. Not particularly to his own children, whom he loved by the way, but also to the case with the kidnapped Matthew. He wasn't the basic cop who is always portrait like a brainless idiot. Yet, he wouldn't have accomplished anything without the help of Frieda, because he had no experience in mind deciphering.

    *Alan - poor thing. I felt so sorry for him. He was abandoned as a baby, manipulated through dreams, and never really given the chance to live.

    *Dean - Ugh, I hated that man! And that little twist in the end? I totally knew it was coming, but that didn't mean I liked it at all. He did not deserve what happened to him. It really should've been the other way around. But I just knew that he was smart in that cunning sort of way. Nasty person.

    And I can safely say that all the supporting characters played their roles pretty well. They made the story complete and intriguing.

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This had such a promising start that I really thought that this would be the next series that I would fall in love with. Unfortunately this fell quite short of that. I could never really find myself interested in following the main character Freida. She just felt too cold to me. We never really get to read much about her past and it just seems like there are things in her past that have made her the way she is. I also felt that much of the book's events were predictable. There was one main twist that I didn't guess but I guessed everything else way before it happened. That lessened my interest in this book and made it seem to drag on. There just didn't seem to be anything special about this book and I won't be continuing on with the series.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    How can a story be left very reluctantly at Chapter 10 and be rated 5 stars....then on restarting be abandoned in boredom a few lines in? A lot I think has to to with the lovey dovey scene I "walked" in on. If I want lovey dovey I won't pick up a crime book. Nicci French are a married couple? They need to keep that out of their books and keep with what are normally riveting white knuckle rides.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An excellent psychological thriller! I am looking forward to the next Dr Frieda Klein novel.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This superb psychological thriller from the pseudonymous French (The Other Side of the Door) stars a cerebral and self-contained London psychotherapist, Frieda Klein. When one of Frieda's patients describes longings for a child eerily like five-year-old Matthew Faraday, whose recent abduction is front-page news, she reluctantly reports what she hopes is a coincidence to the authorities. Det. Chief Insp. Malcolm Karlsson asks for her insights first on one aspect of the case and then on another, drawing her into an investigation involving her patient's shadowy past and an earlier abduction with subtle links to Matthew's. In a further breach of her once impeccable boundaries, Klein's personal life gets tangled as well, when her lover decides to relocate overseas, her adolescent niece grows troubled, and a colleague spins out of control. Summary HPLGreat atmosphere, great literary style and great protagonist. Frieda Klein is too idiosyncratic for just one book so I am delighted that BLUE MONDAY is the first in a series. As I've noted before, I don't bother trying to figure out "whodunit", especially when the writing is as good as this; but the authors throw in a few surprises with superb timing!8 out of 10 Highly recommended to readers of literary mysteries.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I had a difficult time starting this suspense/murder mystery novel. The prologue describes the pain the 9 year old suffers when her 5 year old sibling is abducted - such a painful subject. But I found the subject treated with such respect that I got engrossed in the story. This novel introduces a psychiatrist working in London, Freida Klein, and she is an interesting character, self-controlled and terribly isolated, with quite a few personal problems that she tries to control. I'm not sure if I will read more in the series but I thought this was good.

    I believe this novel was recommended as a novel that uses the location as a significant part of the story. There are parts of London that set quite a spooky background and the weather is a very present part of the characters lives.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    BLUE MONDAY: A FREIDA KLEIN MYSTERY is Book 1 in a very compelling, very suspenseful series by Nicci French.Nicci French is the pseudonym of English husband and wife team, Nicci Gerrard and Sean French, who write psychological thrillers together.BLUE MONDAY is a mystery; a suspense thriller with very detailed, troubling, dark and chilling characters.Freida Klein is a very structured, very organized, very ethical, very solitary psychotherapist who often walks the streets of nighttime London. Maps are included, which I greatly enjoyed. The ‘sense of place’, the atmospheric details made me feel a part of the landscape.Freida reluctantly finds herself in the middle of an investigation helping a very skeptical, yet desperate Chief Inspector Karlsson. The case involves the abduction of a young 5 year old boy and Freida comes to suspect a link with a similar abduction 22 years previously.I ‘discovered’ this series and wanted to begin with the first book in the series, BLUE MONDAY. I am halfway through the second title. The books are very suspenseful and do not disappoint.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Good ending.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    As I mentioned before, I started with book 7 – yeah, brilliant. But I was so taken with the story and characters that I decided I would grab book 1 and read the beginning, even if I do have a few spoilers along the way.This book is the start of the Frieda Klein series and it begins in 1987.It takes a while to get started, it moves rather slowly at first while you get to know the characters but, in my opinion, the character development is worth it. Frieda is a psychotherapist. She isn’t a warm character but I like her. She’s complex, cool and competent. Intelligent and a problem solver. Her mind never seems to shut down and so she walks the streets of London at night until she is weary. I like her rituals such as laying the fire in the morning so she can start a fire each evening when she returns home. I like her organizational method to approaching….anything.This book introduces us to Frieda’s latest client, a troubled man named Alan Dekker. The short gist of it is he is an emotional mess. He is on the verge of a breakdown and anxious all the time about so many things in his life. To add to it, he and his wife Carrie are having trouble conceiving a child. He wants a child of his own rather than adopting and gives Frieda great detailed descriptions of his fantasy child, down to the hair color and build. He explains all this during his therapy sessions, a place where he should be safe and know his feelings won’t be shared. Unfortunately a little red-haired boy named Matthew Faraday has been abducted and he fits the description of the fantasy child to the letter. Big red flag here! Did Dekker abduct Matthew?Now comes the ethical dilemma for Frieda about whether she needs to go to the police. Detective Chief Inspector Karlsson is assigned the missing child case and this is where he crosses paths with Frieda Klein. It’s explosive in so many ways. This sets up the premise that Frieda may be working, albeit hesitantly, with the police now and again.The end wraps up fairly nicely yet leaves you curious about a few possible loose ends.So. Now that I have read both the last book and then this book I can say that I will read the series - but I liked the characters in Sunday Silence better than this one. Clear as mud right? Knowing how some of these folks turn out and clearly the writing was crisper in book 7, that’s what interests me. Blue Monday needed to have the character development and the explanations about their lives but it wasn’t a I’m-in-love-with-this-series instantly had I started with this book.Please don’t let me turn you off to the Frieda Klein series, I honestly do think it’s good.Food mentioned here and there……Curried cauliflower and chick pea saladMarmalade Bakewell tartHolubsti (pickled fish)Kutya (wheat, honey, poppyseed and nuts)
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Book Description Immensely intelligent and poignantly human, Frieda Klein has captivated book critics and crime readers everywhere with her debut outing as Blue Monday's iconoclastic heroine. A psychotherapist and insomniac who spends her nights walking along the ancient rivers that lie beneath modern London, Frieda stars in a dazzling new crime series in which the terrors of the mind spill over into real life.   When five-year-old Matthew Farraday is abducted, Frieda cannot ignore the fact that his photograph perfectly matches the boy one of her patients describes from his fantasies. Before long, Frieda finds herself serving as the reluctant sidekick of Detective Chief Inspector Karlsson at the center of a desperate race to find the kidnapper. Blue Monday is an atmospheric, stunning first novel in a crime series for fans of In Treatment and The Killing.

    My Review Nicci French is noted for her superb psychological suspense thrillers but if you don't believe in dreams or telepathic feelings you may have a problem with the reality of this novel. It is definitely an intriguing debut and a powerful and gripping page turner with a terrific twist at the end that I did not see coming. Frieda Klein is a truly unique character and I do look forward to following her in the rest of the series. 
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Blue Monday by Nicci French is a 2011 publication and is the first book in the Frieda Klein series. I enjoy British mysteries, but rarely get the pleasure of indulging in one these days. I have been trying for a while to get started on this series after reading several other books by this author. However, I was initially taken aback by how this story started off and the way it seemed to flit from one scene to another with no warning that the entire train of thought has been switched, not to mention the motley crew of characters that also bounced in and out of the story with no particular rhyme or reason. So, the story was at once a dark psychological mystery and offbeat and quirky. It was as though the authors were going for an atmospheric, creepy sort of suspense, but was thwarted by this odd duck cast of characters and their own little personal dramas. Frieda is a psychotherapist that takes on a new patient with various maladies, but is soon confiding in her about some strange fantasies and dreams, which leads Frieda to believe he man be somehow involved in the disappearance of a young child. Enter Detective Chief Inspector Karlsson, who is working the case and decides to put his skepticism aside and allow Frieda to help with the case. In the meantime, Frieda makes a new friend, loses a lover, and deals with the downfall of her mentor on top of coping with her niece and the approaching Christmas holidays. Anytime a story deals with a missing child there is automatically a feeling of unease and tense emotions. The fate of young child hangs in the balance as Frieda and Karlsson race against time to find him, while connecting the dots in a much older missing persons case. The mind games that proceed with Frieda coaxing information from her patient are odd, edgy, and surreal at times. There are some truly warped and diabolical plot twists along the way, making this a pretty dark thriller. Frieda’s character is hard to get a bead on, but I did like her and found myself hoping she will find some happiness in her personal life at some point in the future. I hope this same group of characters are recurring ones because although I initially found them to be distracting, I ultimately grew to like them and care about their problems. In a strange way they all made a pretty good team. While most of the questions were answered there were a few lingering issues that will haunt Frieda and one huge shocker that left me feeling very ill at ease. The good thing is that there are several more installments of this series and now that I have this first one under my belt, and know what to expect, I’m very curious to see how things will proceed from here. 3.5 stars
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This really wasn't for me. A little girl disappears and then, 20 years later, a little boy. There were multiple disorientating viewpoints. Frieda, the psychoanalyst, was a reasonably likeable character, but I wanted the police to get on with finding Matthew, rather than listening to her tutor her niece or agonize about her love life. Then Frieda went into detective mode a little herself and seemed to travel round the country discussing her client with everyone she met in a totally inappropriate way. I had to skip the Matthew sections and then started skimming altogether. I found the ending rather disturbing. I did not see the final twist coming, but I do not believe it.Strangely the whole book felt vaguely familiar; maybe I have read another in this series without recording it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I'm not a big mystery reader. I enjoy them, but they tend a bit too much to the formulaic for me, although I realize the irony given how much time I spend reading YA paranormal novels. Also, being a character-driven reader, I generally have trouble relating to the hard-boiled detective types.

    That said, I really enjoyed reading this, perhaps even loved it. I have always been fascinated by the minds of criminals, along with everyone else apparently, given the popularity of shows like Criminal Minds. Blue Monday focuses on the kidnapping of young children, a girl and 20 years later a boy. The reader gets a third person view into the mind of every character, which really worked for this novel.

    What I definitely loved was that the focus of the book, and the series, is Frieda. She is awesome and a character I can totally relate to, even in her desire to push people away. She is really why I so much enjoyed reading this book, because she really has a strength as a character. Plus, I liked that the mystery was from the perspective of a psychologist rather than a detective, which gave a different filter to the story.

    I know I will be reading more Nicci French (Nicci Gerrard Sean French) novels in the future, especially the next Frieda Klein book. So glad there's more!

    P.S. I really want you to know that this cover looks so much prettier in person, because it's all shiny.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The first book in a planned series from husband and wife writing team Nicci Gerrard and Sean French features therapist Frieda Klein as its nuanced protagonist. She is a very private person but spends her working life delving into other people’s secrets in an effort to help them cope. One of her new patients tells her something that she links to the case of a kidnapped child that has been in the media for many days and, with misgivings, she goes to the police with her idea. The detective in charge of the case is Malcolm Karlsson who, desperate not to be known as “the copper who didn’t rescue Matthew Faraday” and having no real evidence to go on, acts on Frieda’s vague speculations.

    Although I read this book easily and quickly there was something about it that left me thinking I would be unlikely to seek out future books in the series. The best way I can describe my reaction is that I thought it had the feel of having been a book written by committee, and I’m not referring to the fact it has two authors. There just seemed to me to be a few too many details and features that had been carefully inserted to take advantage of current trends and marketing opportunities, and I felt like they took precedence over any story demanding to be told. Each (of the many, many) characters has the feel of having been very carefully chosen to offer as broad a cross-section as possible of each kind of demographic one might meet in a big city (and thereby appeal to the broadest possible cross section of readers). There’s one with a Scandinavian-sounding name (which had me hearing the wheels of a bandwagon rolling along), one immigrant builder, one self-harming teenager and so on but none of these are really dealt with in much depth. Even the book’s title is meant to offer some kind of branding that will link future titles together using days of the week but this is also a surface-only element as nothing at all is made of the title in this book.

    The main plot of the book, the desperate search for young Matthew Faraday, is well-handled, if predictable in parts and has a satisfyingly complicated resolution. The use of snippets of story seen from the kidnapped boy’s point of view is restrained and therefore does add drama and intensity to this aspect of the story and the use of Frieda as the tenacious amateur sleuth adds originality to a crowded space. There is some exposure to some interesting scientific ideas that I would actually like to have seen further explored, perhaps at the expense of some of the more random elements of the story.

    I wonder if I’ve been harsher on this than I usually am with first books in a series but this writing team does have a dozen standalone novels to their name (of which I’ve only read a couple) so they shouldn’t be making the same mistakes as a debut author might be forgiven for. In the end I enjoyed Blue Monday enough to read another one in the series if it crosses my path (as this one did for my face to face book club) but I’m not really interested enough to actively seek one out.

    My rating 2.5
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I haven't read any Nicci French in a long while and this is the second one I've read in less than a week. I really enjoyed it. I found it was well written, although some parts were for me a little unbelievable, but I will put that down to artistic license. I thought the main character, Frieda Klein, was okay - I found a little cold and unlovable. I also guessed what happened at the end. But for me a welcome return to Nicci French books.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    OK book this first in the series of Freida Klein books. Freida is a therapist based in London she assists people who feel lost and need her help. This book is ok but a bit to far fetched the writing was good thoughlKeeps you guessing right to the end. Will look out for the second novel in this series.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This was my first Nicci French novel. I don't think it's complete rubbish at all - the plot idea was good and I did get a feel of London as they described it. It reads fluently as well. But there were far too many characters - and of those, far too many I didn't connect with at all. I also felt like the same scene was repeated over and over again - Frieda lying awake at night and thinking, Frieda eating, etc. Sometimes, the pace was really off as well. At time, I felt they could've told the story spread over 100 pages in just 30 or so.I'll still give the first Nicci French novel a try, though.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Frieda's a very interesting character with a personal history in knots it will be fun to tease out in future books. Although the final twist in this particular plot won't come as a surprise if you've been paying attention, that doesn't make it any less juicy. Recommended.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Blue Monday marks the start of a new series from bestselling husband and wife team Nicci French. Frieda Klein is a psychotherapist in London, England. She is a private person, who keeps her own emotions and life tightly in check. One of her latest patients has been having dreams . Dreams where he 'obtains' a son - a red haired little boy that he describes in great detail. "She thought of all the secrets she had been told over the years, all those illicit thoughts, desires, fears that people gave to her for safe keeping. ...she had always carried them with a sense of privilege, that people allowed her to see their fears, allowed her to be their light." But when little red headed Matthew Farraday goes missing and the details are eerily like her patient described, Frieda feels she has no choice but to go to the police with her concerns. Detective Chief Inspector Malcolm Karlsson is the other protagonist in this series. He's a bit all over the map, but is a likable character who will grow into his role I believe. I found the opening of this book to be a bit slow. Indeed, I started it, read about 50 pages and put it down. It was only on picking it up a second time, that it really got good for me. I did found it hard to believe that Josef, a carpenter who falls through Frieda's office ceiling becomes such an important and trusted confidante in her life. On the other hand, it does speak volumes about her personal life. Other characters, such as her niece Chloe, don't overly add to the story, but seem to have been to lay the background for further books. French has crafted an excellent plot. I don't want to give any of it away, but it truly was unique. The chapters written from Matthew's point of view in captivity were, as to be expected, hard to read. I always like being able to get in on the ground floor and read the first novel in a new series. I think this will be an interesting series, focusing on more of the psychological aspects of the crimes and characters versus a 'gritty' crime series. Now that the stage has been set and the players introduced, I'm sure further books will be a bit 'smoother' and we'll get to know Frieda and Malcolm a little better.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I've always been a bit curious about the husband and wife writing team known at Nicci French, so when I learned that their latest book was the first in a new series, I snatched it up. The series spotlights psychotherapist Frieda Klein--a woman with more than few quirks--and her practice. This first one involves a patient she reluctantly took over after a colleague's nervous breakdown. She begins to suspect that her new client may have something to do with a missing little boy, and reluctantly speaks to the police about it, stirring up a major storm that blows in all sorts of unexpected things. While I felt that there were a couple of unsupported leaps in the story line, I still found it an absorbing thriller that ends in a very, very interesting way.