Land of the living door Nicci French

Author: Nicci French
Place and date of publishing: 2005
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd (UK)
Number of pages: 317 pages

Summary:
Abigail Devereaux finds herself hooded and bonded in an unknown space where there’s a rude man feeding her and saying that, if she doesn’t do exactly what he tells her to do, is going to kill her, just like the others. She realises that she’s kidnapped and after a while she risks her life and tries to escape, it works and she enters the land of the living again.
The only problem is that she can’t recall anything that happened within two weeks before her kidnapping. This makes her story very unbelievable for the police and they don’t do anything.
Her personal live is also very much disturbed, she hears that in the two weeks she can’t remember she broke up with her boyfriend, left her friends and quitted her successful job. She is desperate and sets of the find out what happened in those two weeks. After having found out what she has done, she finds the place where she was kept kidnapped. She confronts her kidnapper and everything turns out fine; the police believes what happened and she gets back with her friends.

A list and description of the main characters:

Abigail (Abbie) Deveraux: she is the most important person in the book. You read the story trough her eyes. In the beginning she is kidnapped and she lost her mind. She is a very determined person.

An explanation of the title:

Land of living is the title of book. In the beginning Abbie is kidnapped but she escaped and she can’t remember what happened in the 2 weeks before. After the kidnapping she is back in the land of living and she has to start with a new life. The land of living is like new for her.

An explanation of the main theme:

The main theme is crime.

Beginning of the book:

Abbie Devereaux is in a bind. Literally. She's tied up, gagged and has a noose around her neck. She's in the pitch black with no idea of how she got there, or who her captor is. To prevent herself from going mad, she counts the seconds and estimates how long her captor has gone - and how long it will be until he next decides to give her a drink of water through a straw. Or feed her the sludge that passes for food. Or maybe he'll pull her trousers down and let her use the toilet, which is a bucket.

End of the book:

Abbie finds out who her kidnapper is. She doesn’t know him. But when she finds him he is kidnapping a other woman. Abbie helps to escape and the police is getting after the kidnapper.

An explanation of the climax or anti climax:

The climax is the part where she finds her kidnapper so she knows who he is. The whole book she is looking for her kidnapper and in the end she finally finds him. That is definitely the climax, because you want to know that from the beginning.

My personal opinion:

This book was very good. It is very thrilling and you notice that trough the whole book. For me it was a pity, that the kidnapper an unknown person in Abbie’s life was. I love books where good people turned out to be bad and that it the bad person is an acquaintance.