Summer reads – Waiting for Wednesday by Nicci French

Published by Emma Lee-Potter in on Tuesday 23rd July 2013

Nicci FrenchI’ve been addicted to Nicci French’s Frieda Klein series ever since the first book was published two years ago.

Now the third, Waiting for Wednesday, is out and it’s as enthralling – and yes, as disturbing – as its predecessors.

I was slightly worried to start with because there’s quite a bit of recapping of Frieda Klein’s back story before the novel hits its stride. But once readers have caught up with Frieda’s long-distance love affair, her recent brush with death and the serial killer who dogs her every move, it’s an unputdownable read.

The heart of the book is the murder of Ruth Lennox, a seemingly ordinary mother of three whose schoolgirl daughter finds her lying in a pool of her own blood at the family’s north London home. Considering that no one has a bad word to say about the kindly health visitor it’s hard to think who might have wanted her dead.

Frieda Klein isn’t involved in the investigation – well, not at first she isn’t. But she slowly gets drawn in when her sparky teenage niece turns out to be a friend of Ruth Lennox’s son Ted. And in yet another strand to the story Frieda is also on a mission to investigate a patient’s chance remark about cutting his father’s hair. Most people would have ignored the casual comment but that’s not Frieda’s style. She is so alarmed by “the bright blades opening and closing in her mind” that she simply can’t let it drop.

Husband and wife-writing duo Nicci French, who tend to write alternate chapters and email them back and forth to each other, cleverly build up the suspense layer by layer. Their descriptions of teenagers and of the back streets of London are particularly insightful and as I raced to the end of the book I found myself turning the pages faster and faster.  If you’re a fan of crime fiction I suspect you will too…

Waiting for Wednesday by Nicci French (Michael Joseph, £12.99)


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