First Look: Day of the Dead by Nicci French

by Nicci French

Eight years ago we – Nicci and Sean – first met Frieda Klein. She was walking alone, late at night, following the hidden, secret course of the River Fleet as it flows underground beneath King’s Cross and Farringdon Road until it reaches the river.

In that first book, Blue Monday, Frieda, a psychotherapist, found herself drawn into a case of kidnapping and murder. She solved the case but crossed paths with the mysterious, shadowy killer, Dean Reeve.

In the years that followed, Frieda was haunted by Reeve, a violent, ghostly presence on the edge of her life.

During that period, Frieda Klein and Dean Reeve haunted our lives as well as we followed their footsteps along rivers and canals, council estates in Deptford, warehouses in Silvertown, graveyards in Kensal Green and Highgate, the scrubby edgelands of Dartford and Brentford.

Now it’s the eighth and final day of Frieda’s dark week, in which she goes into the shadows in a final confrontation with Dean Reeve. One reason we chose Day of the Dead as a title is because it’s a ceremony that acknowledges that the dead are still with us and yet we must let them go. In this book, Frieda is haunted by her past but it is also a book about letting go, about final goodbyes. Not the least of those is our own goodbye to a character we’ve lived with for a decade.

About the book:

Day of the Dead is the eighth and final day of Frieda Klein’s dark and dangerous week. For eight years she has been haunted and pursued by the kidnapper and killer, Dean Reeve. Knowing that the end is approaching, Frieda Klein goes into hiding, away from the police and the media. But suddenly and unexpectedly she becomes responsible for Lola, a young student, who has been targeted by Reeve. Together, they move across a London of abandoned houses, hidden rivers and canals, not knowing who to trust, not knowing if they are the hunters or the hunted.