Tuesday's Gone by Nicci French

 



When a social worker goes on a routine home visit to check on a client, she receives a massive shock.  The client, Michelle Doyle, offers her tea and shows her to the sitting room where the social worker discovers the body of a man, obviously dead for a while.  Michelle seems to think nothing is wrong.

Put into a hospital, the police are baffled about Michelle.  The man was murdered.  Did Michelle do that, or was this body just another symptom of the obvious hoarding disorder Michelle's home gives evidence of?  There is trash collected everywhere, carefully put into categories, including bird corpses.  Was this just another body?

Detective Chief Inspector Karlsson calls on his expert, Dr. Frieda Klein, a psychotherapist who has worked with the police before.  That case resulted in the recovery of a kidnapped child, and the uncovering of another kidnapping that had taken place over years.  Klein agrees to work with the police.

They soon discover the body was of a charming con man, Robert Poole.  He was involved in a series of scams with different people as his skill was discovering and exploiting people's weaknesses.  His method changed with the situation.  An elderly woman might be bilked of her savings, while a woman trapped in a loveless marriage would be wooed into an affair and then asked for money.  The police have a long list of suspects and need Klein's help in determining the truth.  Can they discover who murdered Robert Poole?

This is the second mystery in the Frieda Klein series, and readers of the first will eagerly read this one and clamor for more.  Following Klein's unraveling of the secrets of the human mind is fascinating, and the steady suspense underlying the case mounts until the surprising resolution.  This book is recommended highly for mystery fans.