Blue Monday by Nicci French

I have had this book waiting on my “to be read” list since last summer when Penguin invited me to review a later book in the series free via NetGalley. Instead I opted for Blue Monday, the first title in the Frieda Klein series by best selling author Nicci French.

Here is the book blurb.

Monday, the lowest point of the week. A day of dark impulses. A day to snatch a child from the streets …

The abduction of five-year-old Matthew Farraday provokes national outcry and a desperate police hunt. And when his face is splashed over the newspapers, psychotherapist Frieda Klein is left troubled: one of her patients has been relating dreams in which he has a hunger for a child. A child he can describe in perfect detail, a child the spitting image of Matthew.

Detective Chief Inspector Karlsson doesn’t take Frieda’s concerns seriously until a link emerges with an unsolved abduction twenty years ago and he summons Frieda to interview the victim’s sister, hoping she can stir hidden memories. Before long, Frieda is at the centre of the race to track the kidnapper. But her race isn’t physical. She must chase down the darkest paths of a psychopath’s mind to find the answers to Matthew Farraday’s whereabouts. And sometimes the mind is the deadliest place to lose yourself.

The story starts with a flashback to a child Joanna going missing in 1987 before moving to the present day. It then goes for a slow start. Alan is referred by his GP to see a psychiatrist and he ends up seeing Dr Frieda Klein, a psycho-analyst to whom he confesses his fantasy dreams of a son.

Meanwhile the papers are full of the case of missing 5 year old Matthew. Frieda ponders over the similarities between the boy of Alan’s dreams and Matthew before eventually going to report it to DCI Karlsson.

Karlsson has been comparing the case to the unsolved disappearance of Joanna and sits up when he hears Frieda say that Alan had similar dreams in his early 20’s about a daughter, but soon rules out Alan as Matthew’s abduction took place whilst Alan would have been seeing Frieda.

Frieda discovers that Alan was adopted. Then Alan mentions a mystery woman kissing him whom Frieda asks student Jack to track down. Interesting facts start to emerge and I can’t say any more for risk of spoilers.

Blue Monday by Nicci French is available on Amazon, at £6.99 in paperback and is also available in hardback and Kindle format and is published by Penguin. A long slow first half of the book followed by a much more gripping second half.

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Disclosure.  This post is a review of an e-book I received for free.  All opinions are my own.

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