BOOK OF THE DAY: BERNICE HARRISONreviews ComplicitBy Nicci French Penguin, 384pp, £16.99
NICCI FRENCH, the writing pseudonym created by husband and wife team Nicci Gerard and Sean French has produced 11 bestsellers. While their novels have always been less about action and more about psychology they were becoming increasingly bloody and violent (and so increasingly unappealing for this reader) – until their 2008 work What To Do When Someone Dieswhich delved deep into the psychological trauma experienced by a woman when her husband dies in mysterious circumstances. Complicit, their new psychological thriller, follows that path. Sure there is a body – and it is disposed of in grisly circumstances and in one of the few true suspense-riddled sections of the novel – but the tension in the plot which is essentially a whodunit, centres more around betrayal, love, friendship, secrets and the dangerous allure of strangers.
The opening is clever, leaving the reader wrong footed and puzzled from page one. Bonnie Graham is in her friend’s flat standing over the dead body of an attractive young man. She tidies up, grabbing things she considers might be evidence so is she the murderer? Or is she covering up for someone?
The narrative then jumps back and forth with chapter headings “Before” and “After” as we learn who the body is and how it came to be there. Graham is a music teacher in a secondary school, whiling away the long school holidays in a London which is experiencing a heat wave. She’s a recognisable Nicci French heroine, obliging, decent but with a bewildering capacity to make bad choices. Living in a dump of a flat she’s just come out of a failed relationship and is ready to drift into another. Asked by a friend to put together a band and play at her wedding at the end of the summer (giving the novel a pleasingly simple beginning and end timescale) Graham agrees and assembles a rag tag group of musicians including sexually magnetic pub singer Hayden, drippy love struck old college pal Neal and her best friend (or is she?) fellow teacher and woman with a past, Sonia.
The heat hanging over the grimy city is like an extra character, slowing down the action and giving a dreamy enervating atmosphere which fits perfectly with Bonnie’s own passive personality.
It’s up to her to solve the whodunit and while the narrative chopping between life before the body was found and life after, gives the plot pace – there’s never a sense of urgency in solving the puzzle – not a plus in a psychological thriller. The dead body, Hayden, is a rootless unappealing character – and not entirely convincing because while Nicci French presents him as devilishly attractive and maybe scheming and manipulative in his sexual conquests, it’s not really clear why anyone should fall for him. And his meddling appeal is a key plot driver. Also while the novel has an ensemble of characters provided by Bonnie’s ad hoc wedding band, none of them are particularly appealing.
Hard core Nicci French readers might feel short changed by this novel where, while there are twists and puzzles aplenty in the plot, somehow a driving sense of suspense is missing.
Bernice Harrison is an Irish Timesjournalist
