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"The electrifying fourth book in the internationally bestselling Frieda Klein Mystery series Drawn to brilliant and solitary London psychotherapist Frieda Klein, a growing readership is discovering Nicci French's acclaimed series with each chilling installment. In Thursday's Children, Frieda faces her most personal case yet when a former classmate appears at Frieda's door, begging for her help. Maddie Capel's teenage daughter, Becky, claims that she was raped in her own bed one night while her mother was downstairs. Her assailant warned, "Don't think of telling anyone, sweetheart. Nobody will believe you." Becky's story awakens dark memories of an eerily similar incident in Frieda's own past. When Becky is found hanging from a beam in her bedroom, Frieda sets out to find the man she believes is both her rapist and Becky's killer. But confronting the ghosts of the past turns out to be more dangerous than she ever expected"--… (more)
User reviews
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.
“Don’t think of telling anyone
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 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.
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
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.
Frieda Klein #4
Audio narrated by Beth Chalmers
This is my first foray into this series, and it was clearly a mistake not to start at the beginning. It appears that Frieda Klein is a psychotherapist who has a history helping the police solve crimes, although she
She has been estranged from her mother for over 20 years and is not close with her other siblings either. When they are together, it is clear they share a toxic relationship and are better off going their own way. Her mother has recently learned that she has a brain tumor which is a terminal condition. She is already displaying symptoms like facial tics, memory loss, and belligerent behavior. She is declining quickly. Frieda tries to help her mother, but it is obvious she really is not emotionally invested in a deathbed reconciliation.
Frieda goes back to her hometown after 23 years to help an old friend who has a troubled daughter. She is greeted by everyone in a sarcastic/snarky manner. Everyone makes it clear that she is not welcomed back. Most people intensely dislike her. Again, I cannot tell what has set all of them off. She left the little town abruptly, but that doesn't explain why their negative feelings would linger for over two decades.
A boyfriend who has been away in America but has abruptly returned to England after some danger Frieda was previously in (not explained) enters the picture and they quickly resume their relationship until Frieda suddenly is turned off by him and quickly dumps him without explanation. She's very abrasive and abrupt. I can't figure her out.
The mystery revolves around a connection between the young girl she is helping and a crime committed against Frieda in her past, one of the reasons she never returned to her hometown. I was drawn into the story--like watching a soap opera--but only out of curiosity about what was going on with her boyfriend, Sandy, and some of her other friends which I can't tell if she has a romantic interest in them or just uses them for their cop connections and handyman skills. I was hoping for more backstory to clear things up. The mystery itself was "meh" and the book was kind of a yawner.
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, 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.
Looking at the positives first, I will say I learned more about our elusive main character in this book than any of the others. It dragged a bit when she went back to her childhood home of Braxton and I think the story line could have been abbreviated.
I like how her friends gather to bring her nice meals, the support they show her, the wine, the mystery aspects of the story and the English setting. Both London and the little rural town of Braxton.
My favorite supporting character is still Josef. Hoping to see more of him in the next few books. I felt very sorry for Frieda's boyfriend and thought she was too cold with him. Don't want to reveal spoilers but I will be adding my thoughts on Goodreads where I can hide the spoilers. I had it narrowed down to two characters as the main perpetrator but have to say I was actually surprised who the baddie turned out to be.
Side note on an unrelated documentary: The musical group Thursday's Children was focused on in the book, however, Thursday's Children was also a documentary about the Royal School for the Deaf in Margate, Kent. It won an Academy Award for the Best Documentary Short of 1954. The subject deals with hearing-handicapped children. They learn what words are through exercises and games, practicing lip-reading and finally speech. Richard Burton was the narrator.
It doesn't appear the name of the fictional band has any relation to the documentary. There isn't a mention or connection in the novel.
Food mentioned:
Hot buttered tea cakes
Avocado, arugula, sun –dried tomatoes and hummus on focaccia bread.
A sandwich of goat cheese, tomato and salad leaves.
Butternut squash soup with rolls
Garlic- mushroom soup and eggplant and red pepper flan.
Oysters, scallops with bacon and risotto.
"Reuben cooked only four or five dishes and he served them in rotation. Frieda had eaten them all, over and over again. There was chili con carne, lasagna, baked potatoes with sour cream and grated cheese. Tonight it was pasta with the pesto he bought from the local deli."
"There was a bowl of thick red soup with dumplings, there was something wrapped in cabbage, large sausages, pickled fish, beetroot salad, chopped potatoes and unfamiliar kind of little mushroom, a huge wheel of bread, small pastries, a whole duck, pancakes……….."
Representative meal is a risotto with wild rice, herbs and bay scallops. A glass of Chardonnay is a great pairing here.
(Photo at Novel Meals blog)
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 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.
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
Thus starts her investigation into her own rape that occured years earlier. This is an amazing book I loved the London atmosphere and Frieda's home and friends.