Land of the Living (2002)

twisty, turny thriller:
main character escapes from kidnap; police won't believe her; who should she trust and is it really a good idea to retrace her steps? ( )

Excellent grabbed me from the beginning and held me captive until the end. ( )

Nicci French does it again! Gripping suspense from start to finish.... and hard to put down. For what it's worth: first night I started reading this, and stayed up too late doing so; and too bad, because it brought disturbing dreams! Next night, I read until sleep came, but just had to get up early the next day, just to finish it. I could quibble with aspects of Land of the Living, but suspenseful popular fiction doesn't get much better than this. ( )

This was compelling but kind of inconsistent. I didn’t buy her whole memory loss. It seemed to focused, too specific. For example; she couldn’t remember the days that led up to her storming out of work. Wouldn’t something like that have been building up for a while? How could a person suddenly snap like that? I don’t buy it. She had no memory of the actual incident of storming out, but she should have remembered resentments or examples of things that made her angry with her employers in the first place. Same with her leaving her boyfriend, Terry. She can’t remember why in particular she left, but she can remember that she had fights with him in the past and that he hit her. At the same time, she’s convinced that he didn’t murder his new girlfriend Sally. How can she remember one thing but not another? It didn’t hang together for me.

I didn’t like Abbie very much either. She seemed too spastic and too easy at the same time. One minute she can’t stand Ben Brody and the next minute she’s in bed with the guy. Then, because of a cryptic inscription inside a book of poetry, she flips out and runs away from him. Maybe the blow to the head was more severe than just memory loss.
And how she followed the trail of the never to have been cat of her roommate (who she also didn’t remember but got really chummy with over a period of 4 days – as if). She goes from one weirdo to another who either collects cats or has saved a few from time to time. Why on earth would anyone get a cat in this way?? It was too unbelievable. Then when she finds the guy actually in the process of dealing with another captive and she puts his eyes out with her thumbs?? I didn’t buy that either. Too bad it wasn’t more like Beneath the Skin – that one was good. ( )

outstanding suspense ( )