Review: Tuesday's Gone

Tuesday's Gone. Nicci French. British crime drama (series).

"You should probably read 'Blue Monday' first," Julie in the library said as she recommended this one, writes Brian Byrne. It wasn't there, as it happened, but anyway I realised when I started 'Tuesday's Gone' that I had in fact read 'Blue Monday' already. So while the second book in this series does indeed stand alone in story terms, there are references to a backstory (and a futurestory too) that make more sense if you have read its predecessor.

There's no glamour in Frieda Klein's life, or in the London where she lives and works. As the therapist turned reluctantly to sometimes detective, she moves in a mixed bag of company both at work and personal levels, while her consulting for the police brings her close to people on both sides of the law who are mainly interesting for their own failings.

The writers (Nicci French is a husband and wife writing team) have a strong sense of the dark side of modern city life. The underbelly of today's Tyburn is a tough and dirty place, in a story peopled mainly with survivors who are just barely managing that. The discovery of the first corpse in the narrative is a grisly experience in description, though there's no violence happening by then.

Frieda Klein is brought into the picture as the police grapple with trying to understand a woman in whose home the body is found. With her own life in something of a limbo over an ended relationship, we get the sense that Frieda is putting extra empathy into the problems of others, her clients, friends and family, partly at least in order to cope with her own issues.

This is a very clever tale, with a myriad of twists and turns that are hard to see coming. It's also a story about human beings in various stages of the distress that's a normality for many, especially in a large and unforgiving city. It's too involved to offer any outline of the tale, and anyway that might reveal too much.

Suffice to say that, even though I was reading this in the continental summer-type weather which we're currently enjoying in Ireland, I several times felt the chill of the rank, dank and miserable London late winter in which 'Tuesday's Gone' is set.

I look forward to reading what seems set to be a 'week' in this series of thrillers. But I need to take some summer time out before getting into the next one. Highly recommended, though.