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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Psychological Suspense from England, 27 Dec 2007
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.
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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A brave experiment that falls somewhat flat, 11 April 2008
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.
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
No one writes thrillers like Nicci French - brilliant!, 29 Mar 2008
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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