Land of the Living

"One day soon," he said, "and you won't know in advance, I'll come in here and I'll give you a piece of paper and a pen and you can write a letter. A goodbye letter. You can write to anybody you want. I'll post it. You can say anything you want, unless I don't like it. I don't want any moaning. It can be a will, if you want...and then when you've written the letter, I'll do the deed."

Abbie Deveraux awakens in darkness. Eventually she realizes that she has been bound, a hood placed over her head. She can't remember how she got there, and her captor, who comes to give her water and food and the humiliating use of a bucket tells her very little. He is derisive of her, cruel, and the only real clues she has too hold onto are the five names of women who have suffered this torture before her. When she manages to escape, she flees to a nearby house, and when she wakes up, she's in the hospital. She has some ligature marks from where she was bound, but since her memory is so foggy, she has no concrete information to give them.

If that was not bad enough, one of the experts called in to examine her say that it's all in her mind, that it's a fantasy, a cry for help. The police drop her, and now, alone in the world, she needs to track down the pieces of her life. What she discovers is shocking...she quit her job, she can't find her car or her possessions, she walked out on her long time live-in lover, Terry. When she finally does find the place she's been staying, with a mysteriously missing woman named Jo, things only get more confusing. As she tries to piece together her life, she knows time is running out, and it'll be up to her to find out the identity of the killer, before he tracks her down.

French employs two deliciously diabolical twists to make this a very suspenseful read. Usually, we all think, or at least hope, that when our hero or heroine gets stuck in a desperate situation, all will be well if they can just get to the police. Even in cases where the police have shown doubt, there is always one cop who is willing to believe, and put his neck out on the line. Not so here. Until Abbie meets the handsome Ben, who knows more about her past than he's willing to tell, she has no one at all. People who have been her friends and loved her for years have a hard time believing her since the police don't. This reaction, is, well, to be honest, absolutely rotten on the part of her friends, but makes sense. We are all trained to believe that the police will protect us...and when they, the ultimate authority, don't believe in our problems, how can our friends be expected to?

The second twist is that Abbie and the killer are tracking each other. He knows all sorts of things about her, and she, nothing of him. In many ways she still has the hood over her head, as she feels her way around the black room of her past. Sometimes the bits of information she gets seem to muddy the waters more than clear them.

You have to admire Abbie. There are a couple of times during the course of this book where you think that's all too much for anyone to bear, she's going to loose it...and she doesn't. She is a combination of incredible courage and crushed self-assurance, and as she scrabbles for some edge to peel back and show the truth, you find yourself liking her more and more. And as for the book as a whole? You won't be able to return to the land of the living until you've finished this fast paced British thriller.