I've followed Nicci French's Frieda Klein series avidly from the start, but didn't spot this one, out in July, until the other day. I actually listened to it on Audible and it provided me with many happy hours. It's not difficult to work out that it's the seventh in the series, each one with a day of the week in the title. The week has run out now, but I see the blurb describes this as the penultimate novel, so unless they've got their vocabulary in a twist, it looks as if there's going to be one more to look forward to. If not, shame, but this one, despite, or maybe because of, its ambiguously teasing ending, would not be a bad place to draw things to a halt.
Frieda Klein is a psychotherapist, though in this, as in other novels, her work is interrupted and finally derailed by the events around her. Here, not only is her work put on hold, but she has to leave her home, a private space that is intensely important to her, because she returns after a few days away to discover that a dead body has been buried underneath the floorboards. It belongs to a man she had been paying to do some private investigation for her - she hoped he might help her track down Dean Reeve, the terrifyingly brilliant psychopath who has been on the fringes of her life since day one. Clearly Reeve has been one step ahead of her and, as usual, he's sending her a message. The two of them have a fascinating relationship, with Reeve sometimes in the past committing crimes apparently on Frieda's behalf - not long ago, for example, he burned down the house of a psychological profiler who has it in for Frieda - and I think you can say that though Frieda is powerfully committed to bringing him to justice, they have a grudging respect for each other.
However, if you were hoping for a resolution of the Dean Reeve issue, you'll be disappointed. Instead, another highly unpleasant psychopath steps in - a sort of copycat - and carries out some horrific attacks on Frieda's nearest and dearest. Her much loved niece Chloe is drugged and kidnapped, her friends Ruben and Jack are badly beaten up, and one of her clients is murdered. We know fairly soon who is responsible, as we are privy to the murderer's thoughts and feelings - I can't remember if this is the case in earlier books in the series, but it adds considerably to the tension, especially when Frieda herself works out who is carrying out all these attacks. But can she convince the police to pursue and hopefully catch the criminal before any further damage is done? The final part of the novel is a tense sort of cat and mouse game, with a huge amount at stake.
One of the fascinating things about these novels for me has been the fact that I took a long time to really warm to Frieda. She's a complicated character, intensely private, given to long walks through London, often in the darkest hours of the night. She has few friends but those she does have - Chloe, Josef the Ukranian builder, her colleague and former supervisor Ruben and her ex-pupil Jack - she will protect and defend to the death. She has an uneasy relationship with the police, many of whom mistrust her deeply, but DI Carlson has become a good friend, and she's grown fond of a policewoman, Yvette, who here turns to Frieda when she's going through some troubled soul-searching about her future. Throughout the seven novels we've only seen Frieda get involved in one love affair, one that was always a little problematic owing to her fear of commitment and the loss of her independence, and one which ended spectacularly badly in an earlier novel. So her cautious coolness makes her someone it's not easy to love. Over the years, though, I've found myself really rooting for her, and certainly I'm left now feeling extremely curious as to how things are going to end for her, if indeed there's one more instalment on the way.
I think I've read all the Nicci French novels - there were a number of stand-alines before this series started - and all have been perceptive, absorbing and intelligent. Highly recommended - and you don't need to have read the others in the series to enjoy this one.