Blue Monday

Blue Monday
Author: Nicci French
Penguin Books, 2011
401 pages

My good friend Sophie from Belgium sent me this book a few weeks ago. She has great taste in fiction, so I knew I'd really like Blue Monday even though I hadn't previously read anything by the author (um, authors -- Nicci French is actually a husband and wife team). And wow, this book hooked me from the first few sentences and didn't let go until the very last!

The main character is a London-based psychotherapist, Dr. Frieda Klein, who has a thing for walking the streets of London in the middle of the night. Frieda can seem really cold at times, especially with regard to how she treats her boyfriend and other people who care about her. But perhaps this is what makes her so good at what she does -- helping people.

When a new patient starts telling her stuff that makes her think he might be connected to the recent disappearance of a five-year-old boy, Frieda contacts the police. Suddenly, she becomes a part of the investigation, which has more twists and turns than a mountain road. A five-year-old girl disappeared twenty-two years ago, and her case was never solved. Now it seems the two cases are related, but time is running out for the missing boy. This is edge-of-your-seat reading!

I don't get the luxury of reading an entire book in a single day that often, but in the case of Blue Monday, I couldn't help myself -- I didn't want to put the book down. The addition of some unexpectedly humorous scenes involving a character who's introduced by falling through a ceiling . . . sheer literary brilliance! I fell in love with Josef and if there are more Frieda Klein books (which I hope there will be!), I look forward to seeing more of him.
 
Thank you, Sophie! :)