Wow - just wow. I love the writing team of Nicci Gerrard and Sean French, I have no idea how they organise their writing - who writes what - but it's always so seamlessly brilliant. I loved this latest offering and was totally hooked and engrossed from the first sentence.
Saturday Requiem is the latest instalment of the Frieda Klein series, so if you haven't read any of the previous Klein novels, it would serve you well to catch up on those before this one. You could read it as a stand-alone but I think this would mean that you miss out of the history of Klein and the relationships between the characters. But then if you haven't come across Nicci French before this, you are so lucky that you have all the previous books still to read!
Knowing the characters adds such a richness to this reading, and I am a great fan of Freida Klein, she is such a well-developed, rounded character. The dynamics of each of the relationships she has with Chloe, Josef, Yvette Long and others, enjoy their own unique dimensions which just serves to develop and strengthen Frieda Klein herself. She is actually a real person in my head.
The story, as I've come to expect from Nicci French, is intriguing and exciting in equal measure. They just have this knack of making it impossible not to turn the page, and I have to say I devoured this relatively quickly. They really are up there with the best of the contemporary crime thriller writers we're lucky enough to have writing now.
I'm not going to spoil the story of course, but needless to say I had no idea what the outcome would be until it was given to me. It's full of twists and turns, each tantalising me with a plausible explanation for the deaths of Aidan Locke, Deborah and Rory Docherty. Hannah Docherty, the daughter convicted of murdering them, is an extremely troubled woman. who I couldn't help but feel some compassion for. The relationship Frieda manages to build up with her is really quite touching to read.
I loved Saturday Requiem, I really enjoyed every word of it. Deliciously wonderful.
