The Red Room

June 25, 2001
Following two highly praised psychothrillers (Killing Me Softly
and Beneath the Skin), this fiction noir will be welcomed by French's avid readers. However, the fragmented, wandering—at times almost directionless—narrative won't do much to add to French's (actually a husband-and-wife writing team) list of fans. Attractive young London forensic psychiatrist Kit Quinn is having a run of rotten luck. First she catches her lover with another woman, then she's maimed by Michael Doll, a disturbed young man the police were questioning for loitering near an elementary school. When Doll is arrested again, suspected of murdering a young woman whose body is found by a canal where he fishes, Kit is asked to do a psychological assessment. Uncertain about Doll's guilt, Kit points out that the cops have no case. A tenuous connection to Will Pavic, the director of the homeless shelter frequented by runaway teens in a seedy ghetto, leads nowhere. Over protests from the smug police that she is wasting her time, Kit, following her intuition, wanders far afield and questions the affluent family of a young mother, the victim of an earlier, seemingly unrelated kidnapping and murder. Also, she intuits a link with the suicide of a troubled teen. Ignoring her fear that he may be involved, Kit, out of loneliness, enters a bittersweet affair with Will. Despite a literary yard sale of gratuitous characters, superfluous subplots and prose that at times seems remote and abstract, the chimerical plot is rescued as the signature climax is delivered right on cue. Major ad/promo. (Aug. 7)FYI:MGM will release the film version of
Killing Me Softly, starring Heather Graham and Joseph Fiennes, this October.

April 15, 2001
Psychologist Grace Shilling, heroine of French's popular Beneath the Skin, is back. She's not looking for trouble in fact, she is overwhelmed by images of the dead women who as a police consultant she still was not able to save but then the police hand her a tough new case that is not what it appears to be.

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2001
French's skill at creating vivid characters and settings, combined with her ability to generate suspense, makes her books difficult to put down. Her latest, set in London, opens with the police asking psychiatrist Dr. Kit Quinn to consult on the murder of a troubled young girl called Lianne. In reality, what the coppers want is to close the case, and to do that, they need Kit to confirm that their suspect, Michael Doll, is a depraved killer. What they don't want is for Kit to raise serious doubts about Doll's guilt, which is exactly what she does. She further enrages the authorities by arguing that Lianne's murder is tied to that of Philippa, a prosperous young mother. Meanwhile, Kit's love life is a mess, as she struggles to avoid creepy admirer Doll and tries to bond with world-weary hostel director Will Pavic. Razor-sharp prose and precision plotting make this the latest in a string of hits for the talented French.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)