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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk
What a pleasure it is to be in the capable hands of the husband-and-wife duo who jointly write as Nicci French. Their new book, Until It's Over, is a salutary reminder just how accomplished Nicci Gerrard and Sean French are at turning out sophisticated and disturbing psychological thrillers.
The protagonist of the new book is a young and very fit London cycle courier Astrid Bell, who suddenly seems to be bad news for those around her. When her neighbour Peggy Farrell inadvertently knocks Astrid from her bike, Peggy is subsequently found in an alley, savagely beaten to death. Astrid is assigned to collect a package from a well-heeled women by the name of Ingrid de Soto -- but when she arrives, Astrid discovers her in the hallway of her home, also murdered. Needless to say, the police -- not great believers in coincidence -- begin to take a very close interest in Astrid, and soon life for her and her housemates begins to turn very unpleasant, with internecine squabbling (and a burgeoning apprehension about who is to die next) poisoning once friendly relationships.
The slow and inexorable breakdown in the natural order of things is meat and drink to Nicci French, and the lengthening list of strongly written crime novels has acquired another winner with Until It’s Over. It's particularly commendable that French resolutely avoids the temptation to write about a series detective. Powerful stand-alone narratives with ordinary people at the centre are the hallmarks of a Nicci French novel -- long may they remain so. --Barry Forshaw --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
Praise for Nicci French and "Losing You
""Lose yourself in this smart nail-biter of a tale about a mother's desperate search for her missing teenage daughter."
--"People
""Seamless first-person account. . . . This engrossing read captures the importance of the often overlooked and underappreciated minutiae of everyday life while commanding a deeply personal reaction in readers."
--"Publishers Weekly" (starred review)
"The novel's greatest strength is its cool-eyed portrait of an English village."
--"The Washington Post"
"What gives Losing You its chief distinction . . . is its unusually emotive color and its flinty protagonist, who, like any mother, understands that no one can possibly care as much about her child as she does. Nina is the parent we'd all like to be under duress, and I find I've become nearly as protective of her as she is of her daughter."
--"Salon"
"Nicci French . . . know[s] exactly how to maintain the tension . . . Y
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
24 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This author (well, authors - Nicci French is a pseudonym for two journalists) is a master of psychological thrillers, and is my favourite writer to come out of England. These standalone novels take ordinary people living ordinary lives, and turn their existence into the stuff of very real nightmares. In this book, cycle courier Astrid Bell's neighbour is murdered, and a random client of Astrid's is dead when she arrives to collect a package. But it's a third murder that leads the police to believe that there is no such thing as coincidence in this case. The book was quite a cracker, until it switched to the POV of the culprit - then there was a rehash of the events through the killer's eyes. While it was nice to read some explanation, it didn't seem entirely necessary. Nevertheless, I'm eagerly awaiting the author's next book.
21 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
After their last book 'Losing You' was written in "real time" - covering a woman's search for her missing daughter over a period of about six hours, which is roughly how long it took to read - Nicci Gerrard and Sean French have tried another new approach in their latest novel 'Until It's Over'. This time the book is split into two parts: the first, slightly longer part follows a young cycle courier named Astrid and her six housemates as they find themselves caught up in a series of murders. The second part of the book follows the same basic storyline from the point of view of the killer, explaining how and (partly) why the killings took place. It's a risky move to reveal the identity of the guilty party with over 150 pages left to go, but the authors manage to keep the story going pretty well. I felt my interest waning as I started the second part of the book, but a clever twist revitalises the story and kept me turning the pages.
Anyone who shared a house as a student will definitely recognise the noisy chaos of 72 Maitland Road, where Astrid and the other characters live. Nicci French captures the atmosphere well; I actually felt quite a pang of nostalgia for my student days reading about life in the house (without the murders, obviously...). However, I never got a real sense of who the characters were. They seemed as if they could be summed up by one or two particular traits: Miles is weak, Pippa is promiscuous, Mick is silent, Dario is a stoner, and so on. Even Astrid, who is the narrator for the first part of the book, never really came across as a particularly well-defined character - I never felt like I knew any of them.
Also, the murders seemed almost incidental to the story at times. There's not much of the usual finding of clues, building of suspicions and planting of red herrings that we've come to expect from a Nicci French thriller. A lot of the book is taken up with the housemates arguing over their impending eviction, then every once in a while a body pops up and the police arrive. It just didn't build up gradually into a tense mystery the way I hoped. The dynamics of a shared house are captured well, and the second half of the book was actually better than I expected - although, despite it being told from the killer's point of view, we are never presented with any truly convincing explanation of what turned the guilty person into a psychopath. It just felt a little unsatisfying.
This is still a very readable book, and I think Nicci French fans will get some pleasure from it, but I must admit I was a little disappointed. We never really get to know the characters, which makes it hard to care about them, and we never get much of an explanation as to what's behind the killer's damaged psyche. As a thriller, there's no denying it leaves something to be desired.
Anyone who shared a house as a student will definitely recognise the noisy chaos of 72 Maitland Road, where Astrid and the other characters live. Nicci French captures the atmosphere well; I actually felt quite a pang of nostalgia for my student days reading about life in the house (without the murders, obviously...). However, I never got a real sense of who the characters were. They seemed as if they could be summed up by one or two particular traits: Miles is weak, Pippa is promiscuous, Mick is silent, Dario is a stoner, and so on. Even Astrid, who is the narrator for the first part of the book, never really came across as a particularly well-defined character - I never felt like I knew any of them.
Also, the murders seemed almost incidental to the story at times. There's not much of the usual finding of clues, building of suspicions and planting of red herrings that we've come to expect from a Nicci French thriller. A lot of the book is taken up with the housemates arguing over their impending eviction, then every once in a while a body pops up and the police arrive. It just didn't build up gradually into a tense mystery the way I hoped. The dynamics of a shared house are captured well, and the second half of the book was actually better than I expected - although, despite it being told from the killer's point of view, we are never presented with any truly convincing explanation of what turned the guilty person into a psychopath. It just felt a little unsatisfying.
This is still a very readable book, and I think Nicci French fans will get some pleasure from it, but I must admit I was a little disappointed. We never really get to know the characters, which makes it hard to care about them, and we never get much of an explanation as to what's behind the killer's damaged psyche. As a thriller, there's no denying it leaves something to be desired.
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Nicci French's novels are unusual in that they are not only extremely clever, psychologically astute thrillers, but they are also strong, atmospheric stories about contemporary women's lives. This one is about Astrid, a bicycle courier in London, who starts to worry when she realises someone is deliberately killing people she knows - either to scare her or to implicate her, she thinks. Like French's other novels, this one feels horribly, chillingly plausible - you can actually imagine it happening to you, or someone you know. The structure of this book, without wanting to give anything away, is very clever and surprising - almost a little shocking, even, but it certainly works. The best thing about French's novels, though, is that the voice and atmosphere are absolutely unique and recognisable as 'Nicci French World', and linger in your mind long after you've finished reading. French's crime novels also have a refreshingly humane feel to them - the writer(s), one senses, have a real faith in human nature, so that the books are always uplifting, despite the murders they contain. The villains aren't frothing-at-the-mouth psychos, they're flawed, damaged people that it's hard not to identify with to a certain extent, whatever they've done. Last but not least, this novel, like French's entire oeuvre, is absolutely gripping and impossible to put down, and leaves you desperately keen to get your hands on the next one.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Lots to like about this, a good read.
No doubt about it these two put in a credible effort each time..though having said that, their latest, Blue Monday is rather under par. Read more
Published 8 months ago by smartesthorse
Until it's over
This is the 2nd book I've read from the said authors and wasn't disappointed. Great read, couldn't put it down! :-)
Published 11 months ago by Mafia mama
Until it's Over
This book is dreadful! I've read and enjoyed several of the Nicci French novels and enjoyed them, but this one had me wondering whether someone else had written it! Read more
Published 14 months ago by E. Richardson
Excellent
I was very agreeably surprised by the fast and perfect delivery of this item (together with "What to do when someone dies" Hard cover, new and in impeccable condition !
Published 17 months ago by A.E.Diepeveen
letdown
What a terrible letdown the ending to this book was. So weak, I couldn't believe it!
Published 20 months ago by Louisa Maud
Good start is not sustained
'I had cycled around London for week after week, month after month, and I knew that one day I would have an accident'. Read more
Published on 19 Mar 2010 by purpleheart
Brilliant
I am a huge Nicci French fan however I have recently concluded that their earlier work is much better. Read more
Published on 6 Mar 2010 by L. N. Wright
Weak plot and execution
This is the worst of the Nicci French novels I have read to date: Astrid, a London bike courier, seems to be surrounded by death. Read more
Published on 13 Feb 2010 by Roman Clodia
Entertaining, but doesn't hang together
Like many other reviewers, I galloped through this novel, eager to find out how (and why) Astrid had been set up (I'm not spoiling anything here, as the back of the book gives most... Read more
Published on 29 Jan 2010 by Bamber
Didn't want it to be over!
I've read a number of Nicci French novels, and I to say I found Until It's Over, one of the better ones. Read more
Published on 1 Dec 2009 by J.Flood
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