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Amazon Review
The husband and wife team that is Nicci French have always produced psychological thrillers of tremendous assurance and acuity, and Secret Smile is no exception. Miranda Cotton is incensed to return home to find her new lover, Brendan, deep into the pages of her diary. She angrily gives him his walking papers. But (in an eerie reminiscence of Ian McEwan's Enduring Love), the spurned (and threatening) lover has no intention of leaving his erstwhile partner alone. Some weeks later, Miranda is listening to her sister Kerry enthusing about the new man in her life and learns, to her dismay, that the Brendan her sister is praising is her own ex-lover. Soon, she finds herself in a terrifying war of nerves with an opponent who knows how to wield the most lethal of weapons in psychological warfare. Eventually the mental conflict moves towards a physical threat that's every bit as dangerous as the preliminaries. French's novels work so well because of a perfectly judged combination of well-honed narrative (nary a wasted incident) and sharp, truthful characterisation. Here, Miranda and the implacable Brendan are truly memorable creations. --Barry Forshaw
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