“After all, you’re a psychiatrist. You’re an expert in people’s dark sides.”
Sunday Silence is the seventh novel in the Nicci French (husband and wife writing team Nicci Gerrard and Sean French ) Frieda Klein series. If you haven’t at least read some of the series, then you don’t want to start with this book. In fact you need to go back to the beginning, to Blue Monday, the first Frieda Klein novel, which introduces the complicated world of our London-based psychotherapist Frieda Klein, and also her arch-nemesis, Dean Reeve.
Sunday Silence opens with Frieda’s world becoming (once again) the object of public scrutiny. A body is discovered under the floorboards of her London home, and since Frieda’s house/office has become a crime scene, she finds she must relocate, at least temporarily, to her friend, Reuben’s house.
The prickly Chief Inspector Petra Burge is in charge of the investigation, but the crime pulls Detective Chief Inspector Karlsson, who’s out on leave due to a broken leg, and Constable Yvette Long back into the game. Other returning series characters include: builder Josef (who discovered the body during renovations) and Frieda’s troubled niece, Chloe. It’s always satisfying to reconnect with series characters and see how their lives have progressed. In Reuben’s case, he’s suffering from cancer.
The body is identified as ex-policeman Bruce Stringer who was hired by Frieda to find Dean Reeve, so of course, the finger points towards Dean Reeve as the murderer. Dean Reeve was thought to have committed suicide years earlier, but Frieda has always insisted that he’s still alive. This murder seems to prove that she’s right.
Frieda is as complicated as ever, and as usual, she never reacts as she is expected to react. As the case gains national attention and reporters circle, there’s one scene that takes place during a press conference. She’s been groomed as to how she should behave.
Frieda opened her eyes. “There are psychiatrists who are interested in violence and evil but I’m not one of them. I’m a therapist and I deal with ordinary unhappiness. I don’t have any big theory about Dean Reeve. At a certain point in his life, I just got in the way.”
Months pass, and the furor over the crime dies down, and then attacks begin on people in Frieda’s life. … Frieda, a character full of contradictions, must curse the day she ran into Dean Reeve. And while she says she ‘just got in his way,’ we can’t help but feel that there’s a bit more afoot. It’s a terrible thing to become a psychopath’s object of interest, and the more he understands about his victim, then the more vulnerable that person becomes. Will this page-turner (one of the best of the ones I’ve read in this series) bring a close to the near-invisible cat-and-mouse relationship that’s existed between Frieda and Dean?
Regular readers of this blog know that I have a fondness for books about therapists, so I enjoyed this one.
I always thought it was a mistake for Frieda to live AND work in the same place. Just saying…
There’s an eighth book in the series: Day of the Dead scheduled for July 2018 in the US
Cleo also read and enjoyed the book. (UK title: Sunday Morning Coming Down)
Review copy
His Futile Preoccupations ..... 
It sounds like you foresaw difficulties for Frieda in sharing her work and home life! I have really enjoyed this series and you are absolutely right it is one that must be read in order. I don’t know about you but I’m very excited about the final showdown later this year.
For some reason I thought this one was the last in the series, and yet when I go back to my review of Blue Monday I noted that the authors said it would be an 8 book series
I haven’t read this one yet but I read Saturday, which ended with a major cliffhanger. I’m glad you liked this. The series as a whole was hit and miss. Some were great, others not so much. I was wondering if they would go on writing this series.