The abduction of five-year-old Matthew Farraday provokes a national outcry and a desperate police hunt. And when a picture of his face is splashed over the newspapers, psychotherapist Frieda Klein is left troubled: one of her patients has been relating dreams in which he has a hunger for a child. A child he can describe in perfect detail, a child the spitting image of Matthew. This is a very different setup, and I’m not sure I wish for Frieda to continue playing lead detective, but overall it turned out okay. The beginning and ending is strong enough to override much of what happened in the middle, but this is not the best book of the series, in my opinion. There’s no denying that Frieda is a bit of an odd character. She’s a loner who prefers long walks around London at night to socialising although over the last four books we’ve seen people shoehorn themselves into her lives: Josef, the Ukrainian builder, Sasha a woman who came to her as a patient being taken advantage of by her therapist, DCI Karlsson who first requested her help and the people she has time for, her niece Chloe and Chloe’s often incapable mother Olivia and Reuben, Frieda’s former supervisor and analyst. There’s also her on/off lover Sandy who disappears and reappears regularly depending on whether or not Frieda is comfortable with him at any given time. This book provides perhaps the most development of their relationship although that development is mostly puzzling.

The plot involves the beating, kidnapping, and one murder of individuals who are all are known to Klein and her own life is threatened. The culprit seems to be linked to a psychopathic killer who was also involved in past books which I haven't read and know nothing about. So you see my problem. Monday, the lowest point of the week. A day of dark impulses. A day to snatch a child from the streets ...

I’m not here to be a comfort. (…) I’m going to tell you something. This won’t go away. This will never stop being a part of your life, a part of who you are. And that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.” Klein is surrounded by people in harrowing circumstances and she does her best for others and herself. So the books are quite soothing, despite the dramatic tension. Ruth Lennox is found by her daughter in a pool of her own blood. But who would want to murder an ordinary housewife? And why? Thirteen years ago eighteen-year-old Hannah Docherty was arrested for the brutal murder of her family. It was an open-shut case and Hannah's been incarcerated in a secure hospital ever since. Struggling to make sense of this terrifying investigation, Frieda will face her darkest fears in the hunt for a clever and brutal killer . . .

Throughout the series she tangles with the police force’s preferred “profiler,” the pompous but media-savvy Hal Bradshaw. He’s disdainful of Frieda, mostly because she’s often right and he isn’t. (He has a small moment of redemption in the final book.) I can’t say how accurate French’s interpretation of psychoanalytic work is, but it’s interesting how it’s worked into the plot and character development. I wrote down some of her thoughts.When a bloated corpse is found floating in the River Thames the police can at least sure that identifying the victim will be straightforward. Around the dead man's wrist is a hospital band. On it are the words Dr F. Klein . . . I was never quite certain why he committed the first crimes he did. (I can’t say much without giving away Blue Monday‘s plot.) He feel more like an omnipresent “feeling” than a fully developed character like, say, Josef or Frieda or Karlsson. My other complaint is that s everal books revolve around deaths by hanging, which the police assume are suicides but turn out to be murders.

When was the last time you read about a woman mentoring a young man? I can’t think any that are developed in detail.) Instead of the community gathering around a geographic area, though, it is gathered together by Frieda, albeit unwillingly. In a time when loneliness is an epidemic, reading about a community of unlikely friends is refreshing and, for me, gives hope that such friendships are possible. This was a major part of the books’ appeal. She’s a psychoanalyst, which I enjoyed reading about.The Frieda Klein series includes the titles Blue Monday, Tuesday’s Gone, Waiting for Wednesday, Thursday’s Child (also published as Thursday’s Children), Friday on My Mind, Saturday Requiem(also published as Dark Saturday), Sunday Morning Coming Down (also published as Sunday Silence), and Day of the Dead. (The books’ American titles and covers are sometimes different from the British ones.) Is it strange to review an entire series in one review? By the mid-nineties Sean had had two novels published, The Imaginary Monkey and The Dreamer of Dreams, as well as numerous non-fiction books, including biographies of Jane Fonda and Brigitte Bardot.