FRIDAY ON MY MIND by Nicci French

What a great holiday read. This apparently is the fifth novel in a series, the previous featuring the four previous days of the week. Trust me to launch straight into number five, and I didn't know it was a series until after I had finished it. Which may explain just the tiniest sense of confusion and that I may be missing something in the first twenty or thirty pages. There is quite a bit of referencing to past history that I was not aware of, but despite the early gaps in knowledge, this is actually a completely self contained story, and the gaps did not matter at all. It is actually very very good, and it cannot be easy for writers to compress and summarise previous action without boring dedicated readers, and yet not confusing new readers.

I have been a little intrigued over the years with the author Nicci French which is a combination of the names of a married couple who together have written around 20 psychological thrillers, and are both successful authors on their own names. This series of five features the psychotherapist Frieda Klein who seems to have worked quite closely with the police over the years in crime solving and criminal profiling. In this story she finds herself being framed for a murder that she did not commit. It is a constant cat and mouse game between Frieda, the police, the actual murderer and other suspicious character. Frieda basically has to go to ground, living on the streets, calling on her extensive knowledge and finely honed instincts to know who to trust and who to fear. With the way it ends it seems there will be an update sometime in the future that we can set aside a whole Saturday for. Can't wait!