Thursday's Children

By reading their stand alone mysteries I became a fan of husband and wife team, Nicci French, many years ago. More recently I have been introduced to their excellent series that features Dr. Frieda Klein, a psychotherapist who has assisted the police in a number of cases. In Thursday’s Child, the fourth instalment of the series, the story becomes much more personal to Frieda. She is asked to speak to the daughter of an old friend, and this daughter, Becky, revels that she has been raped in the exact same circumstances that Frieda herself experienced when she was sixteen. No one believed her at the time and no one is believing Becky either. When Becky turns up dead she is written off as a suicide but Frieda is certain she has been show more murdered and vows to find the perpetrator and see that justice is done.

Confronting her past in her abrupt and forceful way causes many of her old acquaintances to wonder what she is up to. Of course there is one who knows exactly what she is doing and plans to ensure that she isn’t successful. Meanwhile Frieda’s difficult relationship with her mother isn’t helped by the realization that her mother is dying from a brain tumor, or by the fact, that psychopath Dean Reeve is still taking an active interest in Frieda’s life.

Thursday’s Child is a chilling and disturbing mystery that is peopled with well-rounded characters, vivid descriptions and plenty of twists and turns. While Frieda herself remains annoying and cold, this book goes a long way to explaining why she is like that. For me, having Dean Reeve turn up again as judge and jury against Frieda’s enemies required me to let go of a certain amount of disbelief but overall Thursday’s Child is a good psychological mystery. show less

The fourth book by Nicci French (the pseudonym for husband and wife team Nicci Gerard and Sean French) to feature Frieda Klein forces the enigmatic psychotherapist to confront the demons of her own past when an old classmate begs her to help her troubled daughter.

“Don’t think of telling anyone sweetheart. Nobody will believe you.”

When fifteen year old Becky reveals she was raped in her own bed, Frieda is stunned by the similarities to her own experience as a teenager, twenty three years before. Compelled to investigate the link, Frieda returns to her hometown of Braxton where she reconnects with her both her estranged mother, and her high school peer group in search of answers.

Thursday’s Children is another enjoyable show more psychological thriller offering plenty of drama and intrigue as Frieda tracks down a murderous rapist who has evaded detection for more than two decades.

The setting of Thursday’s Children is also an opportunity for the author to expose the roots of Frieda’s cold and reserved demeanour, often remarked upon by readers. When Frieda returns to Braxton she reluctantly visits her mother, and her interaction with the woman who raised her provides important insight into the psychotherapist’s personality.

“‘There are things I’ve run away from all my life. My father’s death. My rape. Things that happened after. But it seems as though I’ve run in a perfect circle and I’m back with it again. In the thick of it.'”

While Freida grapples with her past, her loyal friends, Josef, Reuben, and Karlsson among them, rally to support her, even though Frieda is as always determinated to go it alone. The only element of the storyline that had me puzzled was Frieda’s seemingly sudden rejection of Sandy, I could guess at the psychology of it but it was rather abrupt and I still can’t quite make sense of it.

Unsurprisingly, in the background of Thursday’s Children, lurks Dean Reeve, the murderous sociopath obsessed with Frieda. He is never far from Freida’s awareness and as the series is at the midway point, a final confrontation between the pair approaches.

I couldn’t recommend Thursday’s Child as a stand alone read but for fans of the Frieda Klein series, it is an unmissable installment. I’m excited to move straight on to book 5, Friday On My Mind. show less

This is book four in the detective/psychological thriller series featuring psychotherapist Dr. Frieda Klein, who is the occasional collaborator of London Detective Chief Inspector Malcolm Karlsson. There is no romantic involvement between the two, although not for want of enthusiasm among readers for the match-up.

In this book we get a better look at Frieda’s past, after a former schoolmate approaches her with a request to help her fifteen-year-old daughter Becky, who has been acting out. Frieda agrees to see Becky, and discovers she was recently raped by a man who told her before he exited her bedroom window: “Don’t think of telling anyone sweetheart. Nobody will believe you.”

This rings bells for Frieda; she was raped at age 16, show more twenty-three years prior, and the rapist said the exact same words to her before he exited her bedroom window. No one believes Becky now, and no one believed Frieda then, but Frieda now understands the rapist is still out there, and still preying on young girls.

Frieda is determined to stop him, and goes back to her hometown of Braxton to investigate the matter herself, with the help back in London of her friend Karlsson. No one seems to want Frieda back, and soon she finds out why as she learns the answer to her questions from twenty-three years before.

Discussion: While this book gives us more background on Frieda's past, her personality remains opaque, even as it did to her friends and boyfriends while at school. Frieda was a solitary character then and in the present. Her friends now are pretty much limited to the able handyman Josef, her BFF Sasha, her former analyst Reuben, and Karlsson, but even with them she remains secretive. As she realized in a previous book, “[s]he could listen, but she couldn’t talk; give help but not ask for it.”

But one man does know Frieda, the killer who is stalking her, and only she and Karlsson understand he is still alive, having previously staged a death to seem like his own.

The authors (Nicci French is the pseudonym for the writing team of husband and wife Nicci Gerrard and Sean French) endeavored in this book to give us more hints as to why Frieda remains so closed off. As part of the explanation, they explored the theme of how rape victims have such a difficult time being believed; often, as in this story, girls are targeted who are troubled or rebellious and vulnerable, and apt to have a number of problems. Police and even the families of these girls dismiss the claims of rape as “hysterical” or “looking for attention.” They demand to know why didn’t they cry out or fight. The interrogators discount fear in the equation. Those who have been raped, meanwhile, have to live with the guilt, shame, and feelings of violation, with no support from anyone else. Years of this can have lasting damage.

Evaluation: I like this series; the suspense is balanced with character development, and the pacing, while slower than most thrillers, is well done. I didn’t think this particular book was as good as the previous one, however, and I am beginning to think that the extent to which Dean Reeve, Frieda’s stalker, knows about everything going on with her (especially at the end of this book), is pretty improbable. show less

It's been a few years since I read this series but was fortunate enough to find two books that I hadn't read yet at my local library. Such joy!!

An old high school friend of Frieda's has asked her to speak with her teenage daughter who she believes is acting up and possibly using drugs. Through Frieda's careful questioning we discover that the daughter was raped in her own home recently while her mother was downstairs but the mother cannot accept such news and still believes her daughter is just acting out for attention. The rapist said something to the daughter that was said to Frieda 23 years earlier when she was raped in the same type of circumstance. Frieda believes the daughter.

Thus starts her investigation into her own rape that show more occured years earlier. This is an amazing book I loved the London atmosphere and Frieda's home and friends. show less

THURSDAY’S CHILDREN: A FRIEDA KLEIN MYSTERY is the 4th installment in the series. The series is written by Nicci French, a pseudonym of the English husband and wife writing team of Nicci Gerrard and Sean French. This title (as, indeed, the entire series) is a very complex, fascinating, psychological suspense thriller. The stories revolve around Frieda Klein, a solitary, complex, kind, gifted psychotherapist living and working in London.
Frieda has a chilling memory from the past when an acquaintance from her home town of Braxton shows up on her doorstep asking Frieda to help her daughter, Becky. The story is very suspenseful and threads from other titles weave their way slowly into THURSDAY’S CHILDREN.
Some of the old ‘school show more friends’ blurred together a bit. I stopped reading frequently in order to get everyone’s personalities straightened out. Frieda’s return to her family home and home town took a lot of courage. Some of the bits were hard to read, especially of her mother’s character.
The plot points were also hard to read because of the subject matter. It is infuriating and frustrating to keep reading about the harassment and rape of young women and the coverups or non-investigations that follow.
I find myself checking out the map first thing, to see what ‘lost and buried’ river Frieda is following on her solitary, night time walks. The River Walbrook features in this title. This thread is fascinating to me and I look forward to learning about some of the ‘lost places’ of London.
DCI Karlsson, Josef, Sasha and Sandy have minor supporting roles in this title.
An interesting, mysterious, psychological, dramatic read in this brilliant series. show less

I find Frieda a very compelling character, and am very interested in reading more about her.

This novel is more personal for her, as Frieda returns to the town in which she grew up, and deals with both her past and contemproary events.

I seem to be on a kick of detective novels with bad mothers. They have been mostly well-written, and something of a comfort to those of us who did not have the saintly Mother's Day moms.

Anyway! Good tale, well-plotted, and very engaging. You could probably start with this one, but it's richer if you've read the earlier novels.

Also Frieda Klein's fourth case is thrilling from the first to the last page. In this story you learn a lot about Frieda's origins, because the daughter of a former schoolmate was raped. The young woman opens Frieda, while notes Frieda that she has experienced exactly the same only 23 years before. Frieda goes to the scene, from which she has fled. She not only meets former classmates and has to face what happened then, but also meets her dying mother, with whom she no longer had any contact. She is grateful that her London friends are always on her side, especially Joseph, but her nemesis Dean watches over her as well.