Au Pays Des Vivants

_"When she laughs, she makes a pealing sound, like a doorbell. If I told her I

loved her, she would laugh at me like that. She would think I was not serious.

That is what women do. They turn what is serious and big into a small thing, a

joke. Love is not a joke. It is a matter of life and death. One day, soon, she

will understand that."_

Zoe, a pretty blond schoolteacher. Jenny, a former hand model turned model

wife and mother. Nadia, an irrepressible free spirit who entertains at

children's parties. Three women living in different parts of London, grappling

with different problems, sheltering different dreams--their lives and

narratives linked only by the singular madness of a sadistic stalker. As they

move slowly through the sweltering heat of summer, someone is sending these

women letters that let each know she is being watched, studied, and loved from

afar--even unto death.

_Beneath the Skin_ is a spooky, highly effective psychological thriller.

Initially, the women refuse, as do the police, to take the threats seriously--

they are happy, they are inviolable; surely these letters are the work of a

harmless crank. But the novel watches Zoe, Nadia, and Jenny move from blithely

insouciant denial, to frustration, to creeping terror, and finally to the

stark realization that neither they nor anyone else will prevent this killer

from destroying them. French skillfully evokes the insidiousness with which

the letters invade the women's lives, straining and shattering relationships,

pushing each toward fearful insanity. Perhaps the novel's greatest appeal lies

in its mordant irony: not only do the stalker's threats push and fester

"beneath the skin," but they also draw out the flaws and terrors that are

already there. French sketches the women's weaknesses and fears with merciless

accuracy, stripping them naked long before the killer arrives to finish what

his letters have begun.

The author's talent for psychological portraiture is, in fact, so great as to

undermine, however slightly, the novel itself. We become so aware of the

women, of their responses, of their needs, that the actual murders arrive as

an almost superfluous intrusion. We respect the demands of the genre--a

thriller needs thrills, after all--but wistfully regret the loss of the

victims, even as we guiltily acknowledge our own voyeuristic culpability in

their disintegration. _\--Kelly Flynn_