Killing Me Softly

June 28, 1999
A critically acclaimed, bestselling British author (The Memory Game), French makes her American debut with a stunning novel of sexual obsession. Alice Loudon has a wonderful boyfriend, Jake; a nice apartment in London; good friends; and a satisfying job as a research manager in a pharmaceutical company. On her way to work one morning, she locks eyes with a handsome man dressed in black, and cannot get him out of her mind. Later that day, she finds him waiting for her and she plunges into an affair of such intensity that she leaves Jake, neglects her friends and her health and even puts herself in great danger. "Sex had never been like this. There had been indifferent sex, embarrassing sex, nasty sex, good sex, great sex. This was more like obliterating sex." Alice's new lover, Adam Tallis, is a mountain climber and a hero. Guiding an ill-fated expedition to the top of a Himalayan mountain, he risked his life to save over half the climbers (although five people died). He seems perfect, but he reveals little about himself; he never laughs; and sometimes he inflicts physical pain on Alice during sex. Despite the shocking revelations of a woman who claims to be his former lover, Alice marries Adam. Soon she cannot ignore other frightening signals: mysteriously threatening notes and incessant phone calls from someone who never speaks. After she meets several more women from Adam's past, she pieces together his secrets, and sees his overwhelming love for her in a more sinister light. With lucid and limber prose, French delves into Alice's thoughts as skillfully as she describes the London setting. The pacing is swift and the dialogue sharp and realistic. The story's thematic device is a cleverly imagined redoubling: the physical and psychic risks of mountain climbing parallel Alice's journey towards a perilous sexual summit. "It had begun in rapture and finished in terror,'' reads a line near the end of the narrative. Every decade or so a psychological thriller appears that graphically recounts an intelligent woman's willing sexual subjugation; this gripping novel joins that group. Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club and Mystery Guild featured alternates; film rights to Montecito Picture Company.

March 1, 1999
Alice abandons everything, including her devoted boyfriend, when she spots mountain climber Adam Tallis. But then hints of his dangerous past start to surface. French is a British journalist whose last book was a best seller in her homeland. The publisher will issue all her novels here, and movie rights for this one have already been sold.

April 15, 1999
Alice Loudon, a nice British girl, has an ordinary but happy life: by day, she works as a research scientist; at night, she goes home to considerate boyfriend Jake. Alice is content with her friends, lover, and lot in life--until she locks eyes with a handsome stranger while walking to work. When she leaves the office, he is there, and she willingly goes back to his flat, where they make love before even exchanging names. Alice's relationship with Adam soon becomes a two-way obsession, and she leaves Jake to marry the mysterious mountaineer. As Alice begins to find out about Adam's murky past, she becomes determined to discover who she really married. On the surface, Alice's actions might seem far-fetched, but credit French's compelling prose for making them seem not only understandable but necessary. Obsession is a common theme in thrillers, but French injects it with new life in this roller-coaster ride of a story. ((Reviewed April 15, 1999))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1999, American Library Association.)