The Colour of Fear. (The Red Room - Nicci French)

Member Name: QueenElf

Product:	The Red Room - Nicci French
Date:	13/06/08 (101 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Intelligent, snappy crime thriller.

Disadvantages: Gory in places.

Dr Katherine (Kit) Quinn is the sort of woman that many of us would like to be. She's a successful career woman working as a psychologist in the Welbeck Clinic, pandering to those that can afford to be treated, but also a Doctor to the Market Hill hospital for the criminally insane. She's gutsy, young, has her own place where she's reasonably comfortable. Only her non-existent love life is causing her any grief.
But fate has something particularly nasty in store for her when she is attacked and scarred by one Michael Doll, a prisoner who goes on a rampage.

Three months later Kit is ready to go back to work, but she isn't ready for the insensitive Detective Guy Furth. A young woman has been found brutally murdered on the banks of a canal and the police think that Doll, who admits to being in the area at the time the body was found, may be the killer. They want Kit to help them out by fitting Doll up to take the rap for the murder, but Kit has no intention of being rail-roaded into anything that she doesn't believe in. She interviews Doll in his own seedy apartment, but though she finds him creepy and pathetic, she has strong doubts about his ability to actually commit murder.

Shortly after the murder another woman is abducted in the middle of the day, leaving behind her young daughter, Emily in a park. Then the middle-class wife and mother is found with her head bashed in on Hampstead Heath. The two seemingly disparate murders affect Kit in ways that annoy her superiors and the police she is liasing with. For Kit sees more than anyone else. In her investigations she finds that few people care about Lianne, the young runaway girl who hasn't even anyone to claim her battered body. But the respectable mother, Philippa, becomes a sensational media circus.
It appears that the police will go to any lengths to pin this next murder on Doll, so why does Kit feel that they are missing vital clues? Can she solve the case before vigilantes take matters into their own hands?

This is the second book that I've read by the husband & wife team that make up the name, Nicci French. These are Nicci Gerrard and Sean French. In my copy of this novel, "the Red Room", there is an interview with the authors at the back of the book which is quite extensive. I imagine that readers could find out about them on the Internet or through their website. www.niccifrench.co.uk.

This book is a real page-turner and liable to keep you up in an attempt to finish it in one sitting. I advise against that, simply because this is no comfortable crime novel where everything is wrapped up nicely and leaves you feeling satisfied.

Instead, the authors are determined to sweep you along with the character of Kit and make you look at the differences between poor Lianne, a seventeen-year-old girl who lives rough and whose death hardly warrants a paragraph in the local newspaper, and the high priority and much-reported murder of Philippa. The case is, of course, similar to an actual murder that happened some years ago, though younger people might not remember it. Still, it does serve as an example of all that can be presumed by the media.

A young girl killed on a canal bank. One of the homeless who sometimes managed to find a bed for the night at a local hostel. A vagrant whose death means so little that the police miss vital clues at the crime scene.

A woman whose life is safe, comfortable, snatched from a public place and brutally murdered. There should be nothing to link them, but there are tentative clues that add up to one conclusion.

Someone is hiding things. Someone is hampering the police in the investigations. Kit's Red Room of her nightmares is about to become very real. Red for Danger. Red for blood. Red for Fear.

Dare you enter that room and face the truth that Kit knows? That sometimes it's better to fight back than to live or die in ignorance. This is not a book for the faint-hearted. Don't expect to be cocooned safely by last minute heroes. Expect instead to be confused, to trust no-one, to wonder how you would react in similar circumstances. Even the moments that should be tender ( Kit's new love affair with the enigmatic Will Pavic) are intensely erotic and not without some of the couple's own violence.

Would I recommend it? To those who love an intelligent plot and are not worried about both mental and physical violence. And to those who, like me, wonder why such books are not more true to life. Finally to those who are not afraid to walk on the dark side.

Enjoy!

The Boring Details: -

Prices vary according to copies. Amazon is selling this used only in paperback. From 1p plus postage. It's an old book, circa 2002. On the plus side you can probably pick it up as I did, in a good second-hand book store for about 50p.

© Lisa Fuller June 2008.

Summary: A duo of authors to watch.