Resentment, frustration, and bleak unhappiness are not merely British phenomena.
Several of the characters are cunningly crafted to represent different responses to this general situation. An independent social worker called Will, for example, is emotionally wounded at a deep level. Having quit a career in the fast lane of a financial brokerage, he has founded a refuge for run-away kids. But when Kit starts a relationship with him, she quickly realizes they are two of a kind. As a result, they can neither be of much help to the other.
This, then, is no fun read. But it is compelling. French is a committed writer who has taken the thriller format to investigate a deeper pain. There are many incidental observations and opinions on offer too. This is the only book I've ever read, for instance, that describes fishing with rod and line as a disgustingly cruel sport.
The London police are generally portrayed as hard-drinking toughs, with little other than prejudice and bravado to guide them in their short-sighted investigations. Kit, who unlike them sees life in depth, not surprisingly comes up with the correct solution in the final pages.
As for the mechanics of manipulation of possible culprits and the springing of a final surprise, necessary to all books of this kind, French is at least averagely competent. Her real strength, however, lies in her treatment of the psychological currents that run beneath the surface, and her very fluent narrative technique.
I picked this book up late one evening and found it difficult to do anything else until I'd finished it two days later. The style is admirable. French doesn't waste words, and there isn't a dull sentence anywhere. Yet hers isn't the tough, hard-boiled manner of many a detective novel. Instead, the book is thoughtful on a number of levels, and appears to owe a lot to a particularly harrowing work of social investigation, Andrew O'Hagan's The Missing (1995), which related the phenomenon of missing children to the world of the British serial killers Fred and Rosemary West.
This, then, is a far better and more intelligent novel than the term "thriller" is usually taken to imply. It's recommended reading if you have no inner traumas, or if you don't mind seeing the ones you've carefully buried under your daily routines nudged gently back into life.
The final judgment on this book, in other words, is "Excellent. But handle with care."
Publication Notes:
The Red Room
By Nicci French
425 Pages
Publisher: Michael Joseph
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