- Paperback: 448 pages
- Publisher: Penguin; New edition edition (24 Nov 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 014028107X
- ISBN-13: 978-0140281071
- Product Dimensions: 18 x 11.2 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 399,517 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Red Room
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Many are the writers who tackle the field of the psychological thriller, but few create such a dark and compelling world as Nicci French. The Red Room inhabits the same sinister universe as such previous thrillers as The Memory Game and the book that many consider to be her finest to date, Killing Me Softly. French is concerned with the unstable surface of reality and the malign undercurrents of human behaviour forever threatening to disrupt the tenuous happiness of her characters. In The Red Room, her particular priority is the queasy attraction of the forbidden and the terrifying.
Kit Quinn has a job that many would find too disturbing to tackle. Her beat is the world of crime scenes, hospitals for the criminally insane, the grimmer prisons. In her latest assignment, colleagues in the police ask for her help in what initially appears to be a straightforward murder inquiry, in which a youthful runaway has been killed near a London canal. At first, the evidence points to the killer being a man who wounded the murdered young woman, but Kit has learned that the appearance of things in a deceptive world may not be trusted. As she descends deeper and deeper into a brutal underworld of lost and exploited youngsters, she finds herself as at risk as the young victims she is dealing with.
What makes this more than a conventional thriller is the author's fastidious examination of her heroine's tortured psyche. Kate has suffered terrible wounds in a savage attack, and there is something unhealthy about her immersion in the kind of life that left her with terrible scars. French is particularly sharp on her efforts to push her life back into some kind of conventional order. The Red Room has the customary dangerous voyage to the centre of a mystery that is par for the course for the genre, but this is also a study of the troubled psyche of a damaged heroine, and her dark world view:
Beware of beautiful days. Bad things happen on beautiful days. It may be that when you get happy, you get careless. Beware of having a plan. Your gaze is focused on the plan, and that's the moment when things start happening just outside your range of vision ...
--Barry Forshaw --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Psychologist Kit Quinn inhabits crime scenes, interrogation rooms and hospitals for the criminally insane. Horribly scarred in an attack by a suspect she is asked by the police to help in a murder enquiry and the chief suspect is the man who wounded her.But she refuses to accept appearances and her obsessive search for the truth draws her into the dangerous underworld of the missing and the unloved.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Killing Me Softly was a fantastic book and got me hooked on Nicci French. Beneath the Skin, The Safe House and particularly the Memory Game were all brilliant too, so I had no doubts about rushing out to buy The Red Room. Unfortunately, The protaganist, Kit, has the depth of a puddle and there is no drama or real intreague until the last few pages. The previous books had me sneaking to the toilet at work just to read a bit more, but with the Red Room I was tempted to give up, when after three quarters of the book, absolutely nothing had happened. Trust me, Killing Me Softly or The Memory Game are the great books Nicci French should be remembered for. This one should be buried....
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
After reading Beneath The Skin by the same author I was really looking forward to starting this book but was worried it would have too much to live up to, I was wrong to be worried, this was a fantastic book, full of twists and turns that keep you guessing right to the end .
The title of this book is very important with it's important theme running throughout the book after being introduced in a very inovative way at the begining of the story.
Altogether a brilliant read for anyone, male or female, even if, like myself, this is not the type of book you normally read. Can't wait to start another.
The title of this book is very important with it's important theme running throughout the book after being introduced in a very inovative way at the begining of the story.
Altogether a brilliant read for anyone, male or female, even if, like myself, this is not the type of book you normally read. Can't wait to start another.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is the first Nicci French book I've read and I was thoroughly hooked. While many such thriller novels are written to a recipe and seem to have a sameness about them, this one had a quirky, modern feel which made me think of the latest styles in cinematography.
The book has an uncomfortable feel to it that is compelling. The world of French is not a happy place to live and yet it is not as macabre and full of evil as some authors. The pace feels disturbingly slow and yet for that is all the more realistic while being interspersed with unexpected and somehow incongruous details of the more personal life of her heroine, snapshots of a confused and lonely individual who does not seem to solve the mystery so much as stumble upon the answers.
Intersting, different, quirky, modern and throughly enjoyable.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Good holiday read.
I have not read this yet as I am saving for my holiday.However I can recommend Nicci French as Good holiday reading material because I am never disappointed.
Published 7 months ago by MAGGIESUK
The Red Room
I just love Nicci French books. This keeps you on your toes to the very end. The delivery was excellent. Would recommend this company.
Published 11 months ago by Carol Anne
Really good... until the disappointing ending
I love Nicci French books as they're as gripping and compelling but with a darkly intelligent edge and some great female characters. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Roman Clodia
THEY HAVE DONE IT AGAIN
This husband and wife team have produced another intriguing page turner.
Three deaths all linked , but how. Read more
Three deaths all linked , but how. Read more
Published on 15 Mar 2010 by Alexander Bryce
Don't give up on this
I have read some very good Nicci French books and at first this did not seem like one of them. I nearly put it down after 40 pages. It is well worth persevering though. Read more
Published on 19 Jan 2010 by Andy O'Boogie
BOOKS MY DAUGHTER LOVES
I BUY NICCI FRENCH BOOKS FOR MY DAUGHTER SHE HAS THEM ALL IS A REAL FAN OF THESE BOOKS ALWAYS HAS ONE FOR CHRISTMAS AND BIRTH DAY BUT I READ ONE ON HOLIDAY NOT MY USUAL TYPE OF... Read more
Published on 7 Nov 2009 by Mrse Kuras
That good I read it in a day!
I'm up to date now with Nicci French. I have read all except 'What to do When somebody Dies'
A good rounded thriller that kept me hooked. Read more
A good rounded thriller that kept me hooked. Read more
Published on 20 April 2009 by Sterile
well-written and compelling
From the first page I was hooked. I especially loved the opening paragraphs about the nature of "accidents" - how true it was and how well-written. Read more
Published on 26 Sep 2008 by Alison Mallaghan
good holiday read
Found this book in the Wrens pub in Leeds
with a book crossing sticker on it
(a website where you say who had had it and where it ended up! Read more
with a book crossing sticker on it
(a website where you say who had had it and where it ended up! Read more
Published on 19 Aug 2006 by eatsshootsandreads
Really gripping.
I enjoyed this book alot, I was dark and creepy but still beleiveable enough to enjoy. I have read it three times now and still find myself absorbed.
Published on 26 July 2005 by Lisa
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