Nicci French: The Red Room

Kit Quinn is a doctor who deals in the healing of the broken minds of those who have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The definition of an accident is "something that breaks its way into what your mind is on, like a mugger on a quiet street."

Muggers on quiet streets are what husband and wife team Nicci Gerrard and Sean French deal in. Beware of beautiful days, their narrator Quinn advises: "Bad things happen on beautiful days."

A bad thing happens to Quinn on a beautiful day. Her face is badly slashed in the safety of a police station by a man who soon becomes the suspect in a series of murders.

This is a Britain where the great unloved exist on the periphery until they loom into tidy living rooms and accidents happen.

The Red Room is a beautifully written examination of the nature of fear, and our obsession with it.

Penguin

$34.95