Customer Reviews

Land Of The Living

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Abbie Deveraux is living a nightmare. She is tied down with a hood covering her head, and she has no idea where she is, or why she is there. Abbie can feel the presence of her captor, but never a word is spoken. Abbie knows her days are numbered as the kidnapper tells her the tale of abducting and killing his women. With nothing but fear in her heart, Abbie makes a quick decision and escapes.

Telling the police of her ordeal will not be her only problem as the police don't believe her. As Abbie listens to what the detectives have to say she realizes nothing is as it seems, and those that she thought were friends are not.

Set out to prove herself sane, and catch the madman who abducted her, Abbie begins a terrifying journey retracing all of her steps leading up to the day she disappeared. As things become stranger, and Abbie begins doubting her own sanity, she makes a shocking discovery, one that will change the way she feels about those she loved, and at the same time stop a killer hell bent on destroying her.

`Land Of The Living' is an interesting little thriller with lots of surprises. Major plot twists are found throughout this gripping tale of memory loss and obsession, and the pages will turn fast as you race to see what will happen next. Well written and filled with full-bodied characters, this novel rises above the norm in the psycho thriller category. Each chapter has a shock and a cliffhanger, and each cliffhanger will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Nicci French has written previous bestsellers, all of which were page-turners that had readers glued to their chairs. Now with `Land Of Living' she continues her streak of up-all-night reads with a book that is probably her best to date. While remaining character driven thriller, the novel keeps it's suspense at high levels by teasing the reader with bits of plot information, and then throws in surprise after surprise to jangle their nerves.

`Land Of The Living' is a twisty thriller that should satisfy thriller readers, and land on the bestseller lists.

Nick Gonnella

This is a harrowing tale of a young woman's worst nightmare come true. What a shivery pleasure it is, compulsively turning the pages of this thriller and thinking "just one more chapter"... Fearful of what the last page will reveal, I still keep reading, not nearly as brave as the heroine.

We first make the acquaintance of Abbie Devereaux when she is in a most extreme condition: her hands and feet are bound, there is a canvas bag over her head, a wire around her neck and a filthy gag in her mouth. But she perseveres, willing herself to survive this horrendous ordeal. Day by day, Abbie keeps her mind alert, imagining familiar images, anything not to lose hope, although she eventually starts to lose touch with reality, almost willing to die. Periodically tormented by her kidnapper, he sometimes leaves her alone for long periods. At an unexpected opportunity Abbie escapes, fleeing blindly into the night, sure her captor is but a breath behind. Finally, she sees a dim light. Collapsing, she wakes up in a hospital, police waiting to question her. Then comes the ultimate betrayal. No one believes her story.

There is no hard evidence for the police to track down Abbie's attacker and only her word for proof that anything happened at all. After a thorough examination, a clever therapist convinces the police that this incident is only a young woman's hysteria, a patient, in fact, prone to depression. Even Abbie's closest friends aren't sure whether or not she is telling the truth. Disheartened, Abbie is driven to prove the truth, haunted by nightmares and the knowledge that her would-be murderer is somewhere out there, waiting to finish the job. Danger stalks her every waking moment. Having cheated death, Abbie plumbs unexpected inner resources, unwilling to fail herself. Thus begins the arduous task of tracking her own footsteps, piecing together remnants of thoughts and scraps of information, ever closer to unfathomable fear and reviving the ordeal.

Tired of the same bored authors glibly churning out mysteries with hackneyed plots, it is a pleasure to find this well-crafted thriller. Nicci French meticulously plots each step of the action, not missing a beat. The author reveals a different side of this young woman with such an apparently routine life, where nothing's as it seems in a world of lost memories. Undaunted, Abbie makes her way through a maze of incongruent evidence, sifting and sorting, following her instincts. With courage born of desperation, she trusts no one but herself. Finally, Abbie embarks upon a nerve-wracking pursuit, coming face to face with true evil. Keep the lights on.

I couldn't wait to pick up Nicci French's new thriller -- and I wasn't let down. Land of the Living is French's best work since Beneath the Skin.

In Land of the Living, French introduces the reader to Abbie Devereaux -- a young woman held captive. Bound from top to bottom in the dark, she is only able to hear her kidnapper's sinister voice. To make matters worse, she has no recollection of the time in which she had been accosted. She is able to escape from her attacker's grasp, but her nightmare has just begun...

Will she be able to adjust to life after the aforementioned experience? Will be able to get her memory back? Will she be able to find her attacker? There are various twists in this powerful thriller. The climax is flooring.

Nicci French's descriptions of the terror the protagonist goes through are precise. I was able to feel the heroine's fear and hopelessness. I couldn't put this book down and was savoring the pages like an exquisite bottle of wine. Are you in the bargain for a gripping, intelligent thriller? I recommend this fine novel.

Out of all the Nicci French novels that I've read so far, "Land of the Living" is definitely my favourite. Suspenseful and fast paced, I stayed up all night in order to finish it -- it was definitely a book that was hard to put down.

I'm not going to summarise the plot too much because the story is a really a rather basic one and also because going into it too much may take away from the overall enjoyment of this really excellent book if you haven't read it yet. The novel opens with our heroine, Abbie Deveraux, coming to consciousness, only to realise that she's being held captive. Quickly she realises that her kidnapper is mad and that he will probably kill her once he's finished with her. But she is determined to survive. And when an opportunity presents itself, Abbie escapes. Her ordeal is now over. Or is it? She's lost her immediate short term memory, and has no idea as to what occurred in the days leading up to her kidnapping. On top of it all, she discovers to her shock and anger, that because that is no physical evidence to support her story, no one -- not the police, her NHS psychiatrist or her friends -- believes her story. Alone, Abbie is determined to piece together the past she has forgotten, and to find out why the kidnapper chose her. She also comes to the realisation that she needs to find the kidnapper before he finds her. Because she knows that he will come after her and that she has only herself to rely on...

"Land of a Living" was a really fantastic read. Brilliantly plotted, with some rather surprising plot twists and possessing a really compelling storyline, this really is a book that had me sitting at the edge of my seat -- metaphorically anyway. The 'action' unfolded smoothly and seamlessly and at a rather swift pace. I really cannot praise this book too much, and my recommendation is that if you're a mystery-suspense buff, then you really should read what is probably going to be the best suspenseful novel of the year.

I was riveted to this horrifying story of a young woman's abduction & incarceration by a man she never sees. When she finally escapes back to her life, she not only can't quite remember what she was doing before she was snatched, she is told, in no uncertain terms that not only can no one help her, no one really believes her.

Abbie is not your usual damsel in distress, she's got ice in her veins & revenge on her mind.

Nicci French has once again delivered a spine-tingling, hair-raising journey into the dark side of humanity.

Scary, immediate & ultimately satisfying!

British writer French's latest psychological thriller opens with protagonist Abbie Devereaux, waking tied and hooded, in a dank lair with no memory of how she got there. Or who she is. Time passes, her captor returns, taunting her with coming death, reveling in her helplessness. During the hours he's gone she concentrates on staying alive and tries to remember how she got there. This creepy, claustrophobic interlude of sustained terror goes on until the reader can hardly bear it, until, by a fluke of luck, Abbie gets free.

Traumatized, hospitalized, much of her memory returns, but the week or so before her capture remains blank. It's the police and the psychologists who discover she'd left her job and her boyfriend, that it had all been highly dramatic, that the boyfriend was abusive. With no evidence to back up her story of abduction, doubts arise and are finally resolved in a finding of delusion - case closed.

But Abbie knows the killer is out there and still after her. With her memory stubbornly blank, she must retrace her steps. French ("Killing Me Softly," "The Red Room") continually surprises - Abbie as well as the reader - as she reconstructs her movements, drawing closer and closer to danger. Abbie proves herself resourceful and strong (so what was she doing with the nasty alcoholic boyfriend?) and the psychological suspense mounts with constricting tension, building to a harrowing climax. Another winner for French in the tradition of Minette Walters and Ruth Rendell.

Abbie Devereaux lies flat on her back, her arms and legs tied down, her head covered with a hood. She sense the eyes that watch her. She feels the unknown hands that touch her in the dark. She knows she has been kidnapped. And she knows that somehow she must stay alive, even though everything she is experiencing tells her she won't.

Miraculously, she escapes. One nightmare is over...but another is about to begin.

Her momories of the recent past--where she lives, whether she has a job, where she stand with her boyfriend--are oddly out of synch with reality, her normal, everyday life in "the land of the living." As the authorities question her credibility, Abbie can't help but wonder if there is a connection between the facts she has forgotten and the kidnapping itself.

Now there's only one way to reclaim both her mind and her life--and stop a monstrous psycho-killer. She must dare to retrace her steps to the place where all the horror began.

A masterful achievement of brilliantly etched characters and harrowing suspense, LAND OF THE LIVING will shock you at every turn...and force you to walk the fine line between madness and fear.

From the first sentence I knew I had to continue reading. Creative, thrilling. I stayed up till the wee hours with this one. I love Nicci French books and this one's my favorite.

This is a wonderful story that kept me on edge until the very end. I really enjoy the writing team of Nicci French. This is only my second novel of theirs, but I have already bought a new one to start today.

We have all read the basic boring mystery story of the amnesia victim, but this story goes beyond that.

What if you wake up and you find yourself tied down, head covered in a hood and in the hands of a killer. What if you are actually lucky enough to get away, but have trouble convincing the police, the doctors and even your friends of the truth?

This is what happens to Abbie, the heroine in our story. She actually escapes from her killer, but does not remember the events that enabled her to be kidnapped nor does she remember the block of days before she was kidnapped. At first the police believe her, but then as they investigage, they begin to doubt her story, and believe that she may have made it up. Abbie has trouble convincing everyone of the truth, because she doesn't remember what actually happened to her in the days leading up to her kidnapping. This is an excellent story of an amnesia victim trying to piece together her life, before she was captured by a madman. Also, she knows she has to figure this out, because he knows she got away.

An excellent story that kept me on edge to the end. I would highly recommend.

regarding your inquiry for "the memory game" and "the safe house," both are available used on amazon, or new at amazon.co.uk. I got both years ago from the .uk site, and while they are good books, they do not even come close to "Killing me softly," which is still far and away french's best book.