Beneath the Skin

French delivers a powerfully intricate follow-up to her first novel (Killing Me Softly) in this psychological thriller. Zoe Haratoun ian (a pre-school teacher), Jennifer Hintlesham (a former model and mother of three) and Nadia Blake (a children`s entertainer) are all petite, uniquely pretty women. They also are all involved in, or getting out of, bad relationships with men, and they are all th e targets of a murderous stalker who haunts his victims through disturbingly personal letters. The pattern established in the openin g pages of the novel seems simple: a woman begins receiving love letters laced with threatening remarks she notifies the local (Bri tish) police, who investigate and provide protection and soon she is killed right under their noses. Told in rotating first- and th ird-person narrative stretches, the novel moves quickly forward as the women describe their growing unease and the stalker explains how thrilling it is to see his victims crumble under the barrage of brutal, eeerie letters (''She gets weaker and smaller. I look at her and I think to myself, I did this.'').

• author: Nicci French