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Land of the Living [Paperback]

Nicci French
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
RRP: £7.99
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Book Description

6 Mar 2008

Land of the Living is a riveting psychological thriller from the acclaimed Top Ten bestselling author, Nicci French

You wake in the dark, gagged and bound. A man visits you, feeds you. And tells you that he will kill you - just like all the rest.

Abbie Devereaux doesn't know where she is or how she got there. She's so terrified she can barely remember her own name - and she's sure of just one thing: that she will survive this nightmare.

But even if she does make it back to the land of the living, Abbie knows that he'll still be out there, looking for her. And next time, there may be no escape . . .

Nicci French is the pseudonym for Nicci Gerrard and Sean French. The couple live in Suffolk and have written thirteen other bestselling novels, all published by Penguin: Complicit, What to Do When Someone Dies, Until It's Over, Losing You, Catch Me When I Fall, The Memory Game, Beneath the Skin, The Safe House, The Red Room, Secret Smile, Killing Me Softly and, most recently, Blue Monday and Tuesday's Gone in the brilliant new Frieda Klein series.


Frequently Bought Together

Land of the Living + The Red Room + Beneath the Skin
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Product details

  • Paperback: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin (6 Mar 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0141034165
  • ISBN-13: 978-0141034164
  • Product Dimensions: 12.7 x 2.6 x 20.1 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 252,611 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Amazon Review

Land of the Living is the latest thriller from the husband-and-wife team of journalist Nicci Gerrard and writer Sean French. They have produced (as Nicci French) several first-rate novels of psychological suspense, such as The Red Room, Beneath the Skinand Killing Me Softly.

Land of the Living is possibly their most assured outing yet, with all the carefully crafted plotting and assiduous characterisation that has distinguished their earlier work. The basic situation is intense and immediate: Abbie Devereux wakes up and finds herself hooded and bound, with no idea of how she ended up in this terrifying state. She is tended to by a man she never sees: a man who makes the promise that he will eventually kill her "like the others". Abbie is forced to re-examine aspects of her identity, her career and the dying relationship she had with her boyfriend. The struggle for survival is physical and mental. If French's compelling novel owes more than a little to John Fowles' masterpiece The Collector, it is none the worse for that. And the delineation of extreme mental states has all the disturbing assurance of Patricia Highsmith. --Barry Forshaw --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Yet another riveting psychological thriller from this reliable author. The protagonist awakens to find herself trussed up like a chicken, hooded, and at the degrading mercy of a stranger she cannot see, only hear. He has obviously done this before to other women and says he has killed them all. She manages a nightmarish escape but the horrors have only just begun. Despite her emaciated appearance, the authorities conclude her story is invented. She has amnesia and the more she finds out about herself, the more her world becomes beset with pitfalls. French captures immaculately the disorientation, the lack of people to trust, the bewilderment at the chilling pieces of jigsaw. Altogether they make an ace of a spine-tingling thriller, to be backed by national newspaper advertising. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Maddening! 31 May 2004
Format:Paperback
Have you ever laid down your keys in one moment and within the next you havent got a clue where to find them? Searching frantically high and low? Maddening isn't it?! Until of course the moment you find them again and what a relief! Thats the main gist of this story but on a much larger scale of course. Abbie Devereaux opens her eyes to find herself at the hands of a sadistic captor.She's tied, bound gagged and hooded with a wire noose around her neck. After days of terror and degradation she returns to the 'land of the living' looking for help and protection from the police and the medical authorities. But she is met with nothing but disbelief and accusations of self delusion. In short, everybody (almost)including the police, the medical specialists and even her beloved best friends doubt her sanity and she almost faces charges of wasting police time. Its here that the story really takes off. We spend time with Abbie who starts out with nothing barely an identity that she can recall and faces a total memory block of people faces places and names leading upto the terror of captivity. But she knows he's out there! An he knows that she knows and he's out to get her!
If you like mystery and suspense, join with Abbie in a freezing cold, dark wintery London and put back the peices of the jig saw of the terror which remains out there....watching and looking, hidden and dangerous!
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars Not their best 23 Feb 2004
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
I very much like some of Nicci French's other novels - "The Memory Game", for example, is excellent. But their latest offering, "Land of the Living", is a disappointment.

The quality of the writing in itself is as good as ever, and the parts of the plot which rest on Abbie's difficulty in persuading anyone to believe what has happened to her are plausible and, I'm sure, close to some women's experience.

Those are the good points. But the downside is the sadistic nastiness which informs the novel - a nastiness which is dwelt on throughout the whole of the first half of the book, so that the reader begins to feel it is intended to give some enjoyment in its own right, rather than simply being a plot element. And at the end of the book, after Abbie finds her tormentor, there is a scene so consummately and gratuitously revolting that I still have occasional flashbacks to it, and not in any pleasant, frisson-of-horror kind of way. I cannot give away what happens, but I'm sure anyone who has read the book will know what I'm talking about.

Add to this the fact that the dénouement is a terrible anti-climax, really not worth reading to the end of the book for, and you are left with the feeling that this is definitely not the best of Nicci French's offerings to date.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Psychological suspense at its best 8 Oct 2002
By Sabrina
Format:Perfect Paperback
Abbie Devereaux wakes up one day and finds she can't move. She can't see anything either and she seems to have lost a crucial bit of her memory. She runs through all possible scenarios and arrives at the obvious one : She's been kidnapped. As to why and how she still does not know. Her captor shows up once per day and feeds her, only to disappear again and to leave her (and the reader) to her thoughts in the darkness.

Well, if that doesn't make you feel claustrophobic, I don't know what will. For me at least it was one of the most intense reading experiences so far. Actually at one point I was worried that the whole book would be like that, Abbie lying in the darkness, trying to think of escape and struggling to keep her sanity. To answer that question, she does escape, but that doesn't necessarily mean her ordeals are over. She tries to get her life back and most of all to fill those blanks in her memory. All the time knowing that the kidnapper is still around and may still be after her.

Abbie seems to be a typical Nicci French protagonist. A business woman with hidden qualities that surface under stress. Well, I have no problem with that, I took an instant liking to all of them so far. And even if you think that Abbie is not determined, only stubborn, it still makes for very interesting and captivating reading. This may be the best psychological thriller by the Nicci French team yet.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars Revenge is a dish best served cold!
How true this is in Nicci French's book Land of the Living. When I read the final pages I had to go back and reread them, unsure if Abbie actually did commit that terrible revenge... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Mrs. R. A. Sayer
5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping from start to finish
I honestly think this is Nicci French`s best yet. Unable to put down after just a few pages. Utterly gripping. What a brilliant writer.
Published 3 months ago by Mrs BC Oram
5.0 out of 5 stars BRILLIANT
This is the best,gripping, page turner Ihave read in a long while. Admittedly I am a big fan of the writers and approached this anticipating a fine read. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Alexander Bryce
5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping!
Literally couldn't put it down!! Very gripping and well written, so much so that I lost several hours of the day lost in the story!
Published 4 months ago by Linda Halliday
5.0 out of 5 stars Hooked from the start!!
This is one of the best books I've read in a while. I couldn't put it down. Some parts were so tense I was scared to carry on reading!!! Read more
Published 4 months ago by Rachel Winters
3.0 out of 5 stars Just about readable
It is a well written book but I felt the time I had invested in following Abbie throughout her journey to discover what really happened to her would reward me with finding out what... Read more
Published 4 months ago by M. B. Greenstein
5.0 out of 5 stars Another good read
The Nikki French partnership never gets it wrong. This is just another success and has you on the edge of your seat throughout the book.
Published 5 months ago by Miss K. Gransden
5.0 out of 5 stars Land Of The Living
I am a fan of Nicci French books. All are great but some are better than others this is one of those. I first read it some time ago and wanted to read again, hence this purchase. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Elm Tree
4.0 out of 5 stars Gripping
I've read quite a few Nicci French books and this was very gripping and I thought quite clever. I was a bit disappointed in the ending though. Read more
Published 8 months ago by L. Sims Robinson
2.0 out of 5 stars Land of the Eating
Let me start by saying this is the first Nicci French novel I've read, and that having read it, I absolutely will not be put off reading more Nicci French stuff. Why? Read more
Published 23 months ago by Paperback writer
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