Waiting For Wednesday by Nicci French

Publisher: Viking, Penguin USA
Release Date:April 3rd 2014
Pages: 384
Source: Publisher

Waiting For Wednesday by Nicci French is the thrilling third novel in the highly acclaimed Frieda Klein series. Ruth Lennox, beloved mother of three, is found by her daughter in a pool of her own blood. Who would want to murder an ordinary housewife? And why? Psychotherapist Frieda Klein finds she has an unusually personal connection with DCI Karlsson's latest case. She is no longer working with him in an official capacity, but when her niece befriends Ruth Lennox's son, Ted, she finds herself in the awkward position of confidante to both Karlsson and Ted. When it emerges that Ruth was leading a secret life, her family closes ranks and Karlsson finds he needs Frieda's help more than ever before. But Frieda is distracted. Having survived an attack on her life, she is struggling to stay in control and when a patient's chance remark rings an alarm bell, she finds herself chasing down a path that seems to lead to a serial killer who has long escaped detection. Or is it merely a symptom of her own increasingly fragile mind? Because, as Frieda knows, every step closer to a killer is one more step into a darkness from which there may be no return .


I always hear people rave about the books of Nicci French. Especially here in my country where people mostly read bestsellers or books from well known authors. So I was pretty curious when I was offered Waiting For Wednesday for review and could figure out if I agree with all this rave.

Several story lines run into one book, but don't join up, or glue together.
If you hadn't read the previous Frieda Klein books, this one would be rather hard to understand, as it links into the previous ones quite a lot.
The whole following up on a hunch part, from one random comment to finding a serial killer, no, too random, too unbelievable.
There where a lot of main and a pretty large cast of side characters in this book which made me dizzy a few times as sometimes I didn't see the match they had together in the larger picture.
The journalist and Frieda find themselves intersecting as Frieda follows up a chance remark made in a therapy session, and they both find themselves asking the same man for answers. Sorry if this sounds jumbled and confusing, to be honest this book is made up of numerous threads - probably far too many. Some of the threads were quite silly and took away from the main plot(s), for example there is a thread about Frieda having work done on her bathroom and when she will be able to have a bath.

I think you have to read the previous novels of Nicci French to get this book better (then I did). If you are not in for a suspense plot which takes quite a lot of time with many, many characters running in and around eachother, don't pick this one.