Tag: Frieda Klein

Review 1602: Friday on My Mind

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Because I read the Frieda Klein mystery that comes after this one first, I was aware of a plot point in Friday on My Mind, but writing about it is not really a spoiler, because it happens in the first few pages. That point is that Sandy, Frieda’s ex-lover, is found dead in the Thames with his throat cut and Frieda’s hospital bracelet on his wrist.

Frieda had broken up with him several months ago, but recently he had been trying to contact her. Friends said he was in a state of agitation. He had come to her office with her belongings and shouted at her when he wasn’t allowed in. Frieda is the police’s suspect, and when they find Sandy’s wallet in her home, they plan to arrest her.

Frieda thinks her nemesis, Dean Reeve, has killed Sandy, as he’s killed other of her enemies, and is framing her. She feels that the police will not investigate further, so she flees, determined to find the murderer herself.

As usual, this is a complex mystery with interesting characters. It also has a gripping ending, and I enjoyed it. Unfortunately, I liked Sandy, and I was bothered by how unlike himself he was behaving after the breakup, as well as by his murder.

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Day 501: Waiting for Wednesday

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Cover for Waiting for WednesdayThe writing duo Nicci French has come out with another powerful Frieda Klein mystery with Waiting for Wednesday. Although it deals mostly with another case, there is still the threat of a serial killer from the first book in the background.

DCI Karlsson and his team are trying to solve the murder of Ruth Lennox, a housewife whose face was smashed by a heavy object. Although her death appears to be part of an interrupted robbery, when the police find the thief, he has an alibi for the actual time of the murder. Soon Karlsson and his team find evidence that Ruth was leading a secret life.

Frieda is recovering from injuries incurred at the end of Tuesday’s Gone, and she is on leave from her practice. Her absence from the case does not prevent another psychoanalyst who is working with the police, Hal Bradshaw, from seeing her as a threat and attempting to professionally humiliate her.

Bradshaw has set a trap for Frieda and some other analysts he dislikes by sending in graduate students for consultation who pretend to have sociopathic thoughts and ask for treatment. Frieda immediately realizes her subject is pretending and sends him away, but something he says captures her attention and she begins trying to track down the source of the story. In doing so, she meets Jim Feary, a retired journalist who is sure he has happened upon traces of a serial killer. When Frieda takes Jim and his evidence to see Karlsson, though, Karlsson believes that her judgment is impaired because she is still traumatized by her experiences and that Jim is a nutcase.

http://www.netgalley.comFrench presents a complex set of mysteries in this novel, which is really gripping and ultimately suspenseful. While Frieda flounders with too much going on in her usually quiet life to allow her to make her recovery, Karlsson, Yvette, and Riley struggle with a case that gets more and more complicated. Even if you can figure out a piece of one puzzle, as I did, there is still a lot more going on in this intelligent mystery novel.

 

Day 344: Tuesday’s Gone

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Cover for Tuesday's GoneTuesday’s Gone is the second mystery/thriller featuring psychotherapist Frieda Klein in a series that is turning out to be quite exciting. A social worker calls on a mentally ill client for a first visit at a grimy, squalid hostel. The client, Michelle Doyce, leads her in to her apartment and introduces her to her guest–a naked man who has been long dead.

The police, embattled with cost-cutting measures, are inclined to close the case even though the victim has not been identified, but DCI Karlsson wants to see what Frieda Klein makes of Michelle, who seems to be talking nonsense. Frieda soon concludes that, rather than having strangled the victim, Michelle suffers from a rare disorder that makes her unable to distinguish the animate from the inanimate and was trying to help him.

When the victim is finally identified, he turns out to be Robert Poole, an apparently charismatic and charming con man and identity thief. He seems to have several potential murderers, but none of them appears to bear him any ill will.

In the meantime, Frieda is slowly beginning to realize that the case from the first book, Blue Monday, is not closed, because the murderer is not dead, as believed. Frieda is sure he is lurking somewhere nearby. She is also involved with troubles with her family and among her friends, as well as the return of her ex-lover Sandy from the US.

Frieda is an interesting character–a loner who likes to walk the streets of London at night and prefers to keep her own counsel yet has several close friendships. The mysteries are involving and complex, and although I figured out who the murderer was before the secret was revealed, it was only a bit earlier. Although the married writing team who calls itself Nicci French builds suspense slowly, the final chapters of the novel are quite thrilling.

Day 261: Blue Monday

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Cover for Blue MondayI never read Nicci French before and was at first irritated by Blue Monday because the reader is introduced to several characters, using a shifting third-person limited narration, without understanding who they are or why they’re important. Eventually, though, I was able to fasten on Frieda Klein as the main character.

The novel begins in 1985, with nine-year-old Rosie going home from school, followed by her five-year-old sister Joanna. Rosie takes her eyes off Joanna briefly, and the little girl is gone.

Twenty-two years later, a little boy, Matthew Faraday, disappears on his way home from school after his mother is late picking him up. Although at first the crimes don’t seem to be connected, Detective Chief Inspector Karlssen thinks they may be.

Psychiatrist Frieda Klein has recently taken on a new patient, Alan Dekker, who claims to be having such troubling obsessions that he can’t sleep or function correctly. They are about having a son, a boy he can play ball with. He is unable to have children but he doesn’t want to adopt. He obsessively wants a son, one who looks like him as a boy–exactly like the missing Matthew Faraday.

Confidentiality laws apparently not being exactly the same in England as they are in the states, after some soul searching, Frieda feels she must go to the police. Karlssen is impatient with her until she tells him that Alan had these feelings once before about having a daughter but they went away–just around the time of Joanna’s disappearance.

This psychological thriller, which is the first in a series, turns out to have a couple of twists I have never before encountered, so proved to be very interesting. Frieda is an unusual heroine, a cold, analytical person who roams the streets of London at night because of insomnia. I think it would be well worth it to continue reading books in this series.