Monday, April 7, 2014

Waiting for Wednesday

Waiting for Wednesday by Nicci French
Pamela Dorman Books: 4/3/2014
Hardcover, 384 pages
ISBN-13:
9780670015771
www.niccifrench.co.uk/
Frieda Klein series #3


Nicci French’s Blue Monday and Tuesday’s Gone introduced the brilliant yet reclusive psychotherapist Frieda Klein to widespread critical acclaim, but Waiting for Wednesday promises to be her most haunting case yet.
Ruth Lennox, housewife and mother of three, is found dead in a pool of her own blood. Detective Chief Inspector Karlsson can’t piece together a motive and calls in Frieda, hoping her talents will offer a new angle on the case.
When it emerges that the mother was hiding a scandalous secret, her family closes ranks. Frieda herself is distracted, still reeling from an attempt on her life, and struggling with her own rare feelings of vulnerability. Then a patient’s chance remark sends Frieda down a dangerous path that seems to lead to a serial killer who’s long escaped detection. Is Frieda getting closer to unraveling either case? Or is she just the victim of her own paranoid, fragile mind? Because, as Frieda knows, every step closer to a killer is one more step into a darkness from which there may be no return . . .
Flawlessly executed, Waiting for Wednesday is a penetrating, twisted novel of murder and neurosis with a jaw-dropping climax that will linger in readers’ minds long after they have turned the last page.
My Thoughts:

Waiting for Wednesday by Nicci French is a highly recommended psychological mystery and third in the series featuring London psychotherapist-turned-detective Frieda Klein.

When Ruth Lennox is found brutally murdered it appears to Detective Chief Inspector Karlsson that this housewife and mother of three may have interrupted a burglary. At the same time that an accused murderer is set free, journalist Jim Fearby begins to investigate a series of missing young women. Soon it not only appears that Ruth was living a secret life, but more and more secrets are exposed.  Frieda, following her own leads and rules, manages to find the connection between the two cases, but her efforts to help are sabotaged.  

The writing is superb, compelling and descriptive by "Nicci French,"  the pseudonym for writers Nicci Gerrard and Sean French. They excel at setting up the scenes and the descriptions manage to capture small, intricate details that make a complete picture in your mind as you read.

This is a complex plot that explores two very intricate storylines in the investigations and brings them together for a memorable conclusion. There is a plethora of psychological nuances to all the characters, including Frieda, that are explored.

The major problem I had with Waiting for Wednesday was a problem of my own making. I have not read the first two books in the series and in this case it would have behooved me to read  Blue Monday, and Tuesday's Gone, the first and second novels featuring Frieda Klein, before undertaking Waiting for Wednesday. Although it is not always the case with many mysteries, I know I would have had a better appreciation for Frieda and the whole backstory if I had read the first two books in the series. I felt like I was missing some important pieces.


Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of
Pamela Dorman Books for review purposes.


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