It’s not nice being used and abused

The term ‘psychological thriller’ is an elastic one these days, tagged liberally on to any story of suspense that explores motivations while keeping blood and chainsaws to a minimum. In many cases, the line between a thriller and a crime novel has become too blurred to be useful. In the novels of Nicci French, however, there is little ambiguity: their pattern is to deliver the mental shock-equivalent of a dead body, followed only later by a real one. It is an effective formula — as Alfred Hitchcock put it: ‘There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.’

Among the best of Hitchcock’s own psychological thrillers is Spellbound, whose story unusually wrapped the subject of psychoanalysis around a murder mystery. It was based on a book by a writing duo who combined as Francis Beeding, a team approach that is also true of Nicci French, the partnership of Nicci Gerrard and Sean French. In their latest novel, Thursday’s Child, the genre’s ‘psychological’ demands are explicitly taken care of by the fact that their female lead, Frieda Klein, is herself a psychotherapist. Klein has already appeared in three previous novels, in which her own life, punctuated by murder and dysfunction, is played out and self-analysed.

Thursday’s Children sees Klein being reluctantly thrown back into the town of her childhood, and the chill of her family home. A sudden departure from Braxton and an estrangement from her mother have been hinted at in the previous novels, and here we find the catalyst for both. As Frieda accepts the request of an old school friend to assess Becky, her troublesome teenage daughter, we discover the reason for Becky’s behaviour and the root of Frieda’s own alienation.