Losing you

by Nicci French. Michael Joseph, 2006

The husband-and-wife team who write as ‘Nicci French’ have produced nine novels in recent years which tend to circle similar themes – kidnapping, paranoia, and women in danger. French’s earliest novels, Beneath the Skin and Killing Me Softly, were justly successful and, although in the same vein as Ruth Rendell, rather less grotesque than Rendell’s recent productions. However, later novels by French had become a tad too predictable, so I held out no great hopes for Losing You. But in fact, it’s a belter.

It describes events in a day in the life of Nina Landry, her fortieth birthday. She lives on Sandling Island, on a tidal estuary 60 miles from London, a small, close-knit community. Mid-morning, she realises that her teenage daughter has gone missing. She has trouble getting anyone to take her seriously. From then on events crowd in on her, her alarm increases rapidly, and the momentum builds. French piles on the tension and action, and you want to read with increasing rapidity. Ideally this book should be read in a single sitting. Although a re-reading shows up a couple of creaky places in the plot, it’s a very satisfying thriller, just crying out to be televised.

- John

The Lost Luggage Porter

by Andrew Martin. Faber, 2006, ISBN 0571219039.
Cover design by Two Associates. Cover artwork: Hulton Archive/Getty; John Angerson/Alamy; Science and Society Picture Library; National Railway Museum; Mary Evans Picture Library.

Crime fiction fans looking for something a bit different might enjoy Andrew Martin’s Jim Stringer series. Set in the North of England a hundred years ago, The Lost Luggage Porter , the third in the series, following The Necropolis Railway and Blackpool Highflier, finds the reluctant railway detective, Jim Stringer, out of his depth on his first day operating out of York Railway Station. Two brothers have been shot to death – is there a connection with a pickpocket gang which frequents the station platforms? Andrew Martin writes knowledgeably about the period, and the books are beautifully atmospheric, capturing the rain-soaked, smoky, Yorkshire winter.

Stringer, who’d rather drive trains than solve murders, finds himself dangerously close to an intelligent and deeply disturbed criminal pair. Can he avert the peril he has placed his wife in?

Occasional strong language may deter some readers, but the Yorkshire dialect is not overdone.

- John.