A Book A Week

"We are all just leaves on a tree and it's nearly September and autumn is coming."

Frieda Klein is no stranger to darkness. As a gifted psychoanalyst and frequent collaborator with the police, she has seen her fair share of troubled minds and gruesome crime scenes. But now she finds herself in the middle of something much worse. The decomposing body of an ex-police officer has been discovered beneath the floor boards of her home. Freida knows there is only one person capable of such a heinous crime. Authorities believe that Dean Reeve, a serial killer who latched onto Frieda, is dead. With the discovery this ex-cop who was investigating Reeve's murders one thing is certain. Dean Reeve is very much alive and still hunting.

With the investigation into Reeve at a standstill, a new criminal emerges.  Like Reeve, they have taken a particular interest in Frieda and the people who are close to her. First, Frieda's niece disappears for a weekend. She returns completely unharmed, but unable to remember the details of her absence. A photo of the niece from those days shows her on a bare mattress in a nondescript room, completely incapacitated. When another friend is beaten in his apartment, Frieda is certain that someone is trying to send her a message. She knows this person is not Reeve. Reeve isn't as crude as this criminal, but this copycat may be even more dangerous.

This is the seventh and penultimate novel in the series written by the duo Nicci French. Having never read any of the previous novels, I'll admit to being a bit lost at the start. There are quite a few characters in the opening scenes, and I wasn't immediately certain of who they were or their importance to the story. The opening chapters contain more dialogue than action. The characters, it seemed, were coming to terms with not only the revelation that Reeve is not dead, but also with the events of the previous book. This combined with my lack of knowledge about the series' overarching narrative made the opening of this novel difficult to get into.

Fortunately, the book reveals more about the characters and their relationships/motives as it advances. I'm happy that I persisted through the opening portion because Sunday Silence ended up being a chilling thriller that I could not stop reading. Like Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs, Dean Reeve is the "big bad" of the novel with a presence that is felt more through his absence than his actions. Even as Frieda faces the threat of the copycat killer, the momentum of the book is building to something larger that will presumably culminate in the final novel in the series. I've never been a fan of crime novels that end in a dangling cliff-hanger. Despite the promise of bigger things to come, Sunday Silence provides a satisfying conclusion to the events that unfold in its pages. With this book under my belt, I'm eager to backtrack and read the previous novels before the finale drops later this year.

For more information, visit the author's website, Amazon, and Goodreads.
This review is part of a TLC Book Tour.

(2018, 5)

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