KILLING ME SOFTLY by Nicci French £17.99, 1 lhrs 30
mins, unabridged NICCI French has captured a neat little genre: a well-researched social issue trans- lated into page-turning fiction. This, her third, is Woman Caught in Abusive Sexual Relationship. Alice marries her Adonis, the heroic Himalayan climber, Adam Tanis, but love-making soon develops from wild passion to acts of violence. People always ask why such women don't just walk out. Killing Me Softly tells the listener convinc- ingly and vividly why, even when the vio- lence escalates, they can't. Like an approaching tidal wave, once it starts to roar and is recognised, it's too late and its victims are powerless to act.
The whole story is cleverly plotted as Alice's initial euphoria gradually shifts into denial as she refuses to accept the harm Adam is doing her, and then into an under- standing of his evil past — and present — as she pieces together the backgrounds of his previous girlfriends. Julia Franklyn is an excellent reader. She gets Alice's voice — contemporary professional thirty- something — exactly right, and the dialogue sounds like real people talking. Right up to the end — which is very tense indeed — the modulation of her voice conveys what gives the novel its subtlety: the mixture of terror, hatred and love which Alice continues to feel for her shining man, and the terrible sadness of their final goodbye.
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