THE BODY READER was my first exposure to Anne Frasier's
writing, and it won't be the last. It kept me up half the
night and drew me in emotionally. For three years Detective
Jude Fontaine lived in a cage-like box with her captor as
her only company. Other senses heightened, she learns to
read every nuance. Unfortunately, this talent isn't fleshed
out as much as it could be. Hopefully there will be future
books in which she hones this skill.
Tortured and raped, Jude shuts down emotionally to survive.
A power station blackout gives her the opportunity to
escape. She does but only to find out that it's been three
years and her old boyfriend is seeing someone else, and at
first, the police at the station where she used to work,
think she's a crazy person.
Anne Frasier does a nice job of portraying Jude's emotional
state: cold, distant and unemotional yet she's still called
on to forgive the police who gave up on her.
The relationship between Jude and Uriah is also well done
and credible. Perhaps, it's the slow growth of a tentative
friendship over the course of the story that lends
realism. Also understandable is Jude's resistance to
resuming old friendships with people who would constantly
compare who she is now to who she was then and
incorporating a murder plot as well.
Someone murders a teen-age girl, trying to disguise it as a
drowning; another girl is decapitated; and Jude still
obsesses over finding the place she was held and making
sure her captor is dead. Are any of these instances
related? If so, how?
Frasier provides twists, turns, and red herrings aplenty
and enough potential blame that it's unclear
who's responsible for what until the end. Her secondary
characters don't have quite the depth of Jude and Uriah,
but they don't need to. The depth of Jude's character is
different: many might say she doesn't have any character
left after her experiences, but we see her piecing things
together and trying to relate to people and that counts for
as much for me. Frasier is definitely a writer to follow if
you like psychological thrillers with more of an impact
than the norm. I plan to look for more her work and hope it
measures up to this standard.
For three years, Detective Jude Fontaine was kept from the
outside world. Held in an underground cell, her only contact
was with her sadistic captor, and reading his face was her
entire existence. Learning his every line, every movement,
and every flicker of thought is what kept her alive.
After her experience with isolation and torture, she is left
with a fierce desire for justice—and a heightened ability to
interpret the body language of both the living and the dead.
Despite colleagues’ doubts about her mental state, she
resumes her role at Homicide. Her new partner, Detective
Uriah Ashby, doesn’t trust her sanity, and he has a story of
his own he’d rather keep hidden. But a killer is on the
loose, murdering young women, so the detectives have no
choice: they must work together to catch the madman before
he strikes again. And no one knows madmen like Jude Fontaine.
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