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A review by ncrabb
Land of the Living by Nicci French
4.0
If claustrophobia is something you have a problem with, this book may not be your thing. So horrifying and gripping was it for me that I found myself literally hyperventilating a time or two, and that's not me given to my usual flare for the melodramatic. Open this book and enter with jarring horror the life of Abbie Devereaux, a 25-year-old woman who has made some bad choices, none of which prepare her for the horror she faces as you and I enter her life.
She is bound and gagged; she is apparently buried below ground, and she can see nothing. The air is heavy with the scent of her urine and excrement, and among other things, her assailant is whispering to her the names of other girls who died under circumstances similar to hers.
If that horror isn't enough for you, things become even worse for Abbie when she escapes. Escape she does, but now she faces the even worse horror of not being believed by anyone.
Because of choices she has made, London's police, always portrayed by these authors as ham-handed fools who couldn't catch a real criminal if he showed up with a banner and a confession, won't acknowledge that she may indeed have been abducted.
Her memory loss alone is frightening. Usually, in the hands of lesser authors, memory loss is a rather threadbare cliche. Not so here. It is an integral part of the story. Not only must Abbie prevent her death yet again, she must fill in the horrifying pieces of her memory. Indeed, if she fails to do that, she will inevitably be recaptured and murdered this time.
I have a good bit of ambivalence toward the characters these authors create. Usually, they're a bit too quick with the casual orgasm, a bit too boozy, a bit too familiar with one cigarette after another for me to do much more than hold them at arms' length most of the time. But Abbie Devereaux is just a bit softer around the edges in some ways. It's a bit less easy to perfunctorily dismiss her out of hand with a casual shrug and page turn. Yes, some of her bad choices contributed big-time to her difficulties, but who among us can honestly say that we are not the product of some of our bad choices as well as our good ones. For some inexplicable reason, I felt a good deal more sympathetic toward Abbie than I do many of the characters these authors create.
The bottom line is, if you enjoy a bit of horror and suspense in what you read, and if you can get around some of Abbie's harder edges, you'll likely be riveted to this book.
There is some strong language here and a couple of scenes of sexual descriptions, but these authors create a believable heroine framed in the frozen terror of a London winter.
She is bound and gagged; she is apparently buried below ground, and she can see nothing. The air is heavy with the scent of her urine and excrement, and among other things, her assailant is whispering to her the names of other girls who died under circumstances similar to hers.
If that horror isn't enough for you, things become even worse for Abbie when she escapes. Escape she does, but now she faces the even worse horror of not being believed by anyone.
Because of choices she has made, London's police, always portrayed by these authors as ham-handed fools who couldn't catch a real criminal if he showed up with a banner and a confession, won't acknowledge that she may indeed have been abducted.
Her memory loss alone is frightening. Usually, in the hands of lesser authors, memory loss is a rather threadbare cliche. Not so here. It is an integral part of the story. Not only must Abbie prevent her death yet again, she must fill in the horrifying pieces of her memory. Indeed, if she fails to do that, she will inevitably be recaptured and murdered this time.
I have a good bit of ambivalence toward the characters these authors create. Usually, they're a bit too quick with the casual orgasm, a bit too boozy, a bit too familiar with one cigarette after another for me to do much more than hold them at arms' length most of the time. But Abbie Devereaux is just a bit softer around the edges in some ways. It's a bit less easy to perfunctorily dismiss her out of hand with a casual shrug and page turn. Yes, some of her bad choices contributed big-time to her difficulties, but who among us can honestly say that we are not the product of some of our bad choices as well as our good ones. For some inexplicable reason, I felt a good deal more sympathetic toward Abbie than I do many of the characters these authors create.
The bottom line is, if you enjoy a bit of horror and suspense in what you read, and if you can get around some of Abbie's harder edges, you'll likely be riveted to this book.
There is some strong language here and a couple of scenes of sexual descriptions, but these authors create a believable heroine framed in the frozen terror of a London winter.