Nicci French

Nicci French is the joint pseudonym of Nicci Gerrard (June 10th 1958, Worcestershire, Shropshire) and of her husband Sean French (May 28th 1959, Bristol). They are all the two English writers and journalists.

Biography

After studies of English literature at the University of Oxford, Nicci Gerrard deals with psychologically disturbed children in Sheffield, in the north of England, gives courses of literature to Los Angeles then with London and founds Women' S Review (1985-1987), a female review, before becoming journalist since 1989, for various publications: The New Stateman , To observe , The Guardian , Independent The , The Sunday Times … It covers the literary news but also the various facts and the great lawsuits of serial killers.

From one year its elder, Sean French, as for him, studied with the college William Ellis in London, before continuing courses of English literature at the University of Oxford. It then gains a contest of young writers organized by Vogue and makes its first weapons in the journalism, which will become its trade. It is in this context that Nicci Gerrard and Sean French meet and marry. Between passion in love and literary, they decide to jointly write a psychological first thriller, Memory Game / Mémoire trapped (1997), on the topic of the secrecies of family and their consequences at the time when they are revealed. At the time of the enlarging of a house, workmen update the corpse of a young girl, the girl of the family, missing twenty five years ago, the summer of its seventeen years. Which terrible secrecy this family, under outside sizeable, it hiding place? Signed pseudonym of Nicci French, the novel returns from the start in the list of the best-sellers. The couple connects then with a second thriller, easily deceived Jeux (1998), which “plays briskly with concerns and uncertainties of duplicity” according to Claude Grimal. A psychiatrist, specialized in the somatic consequences of the traumatisms, agrees to lodge a teenager whose parents were wildly cut the throat of in their residence. She does not suspect whereas she will enter an incredible machination. Written with the first anybody, the novel is tinted of a fantastic universe of childish counting rhymes.

In 1999, with the publication of Fire of Ice , the editor of Nicci French chooses to reveal with the general public the identity of the authors. The book tells the obsession of a woman to discover the personality of his/her companion, his curiosity active until threatening its couple, its balance, and its life. The novel gains a world success and is seen adapted to the cinema. From there, France Leisures will take the practice to make appear in preview all the other novels of Nicci French.

Remarkable by its dramaturgy, In the skin (2001), is even more by quality of its psychological portraits. In the north of London, three young women with the lives and the completely different personalities are suddenly tracked, observed, espionnées by a serial killer. This man sends letters to them to say to them that they likes them, and that it soon will come to visit them to kill them. One does not cease being astonished by so many coherence and unit in the voice characters Nicci French, as confirms it the scarlet Room (2001), double diving in the psychées complex ones: in the spirit of a psychiatrist taking part in the survey carried out into the assassination of a young absconder, and in that of the alleged murderer of which it must draw up the profile. In prey with the doubt, she refuses to confirm her culpability and chooses to carry out her own survey, against the obviousnesses and the convictions of the police force.

Truth and lie underlie the sixth novel of Nicci French, With the countries of alive the (2002). A woman manages to escape with the hands of insane which maintained it captive. But neither the police force, nor the doctors, not more his/her friends seem to believe it. Is it insane or this killer there really exists? Does it have to forget and hide or continue it to find its life? In this dazing account, the hope mixes with courage to learn how to face the life and to feel some free.

By their psychological thickness, by faintness that they create in the daily newspaper, the novels of Nicci French fit in the vein of Ruth Rendell, Anita Brookner and Patricia Highsmith. To write, the couple of novelists are essential constraints: their main character must always be a strong and vulnerable, independent and obstinate woman. The authors are never inspired by actual facts but by personal anecdotes, meetings or voyages. They write each one in their turn, making rewrite by the other their respective texts.

To note that Sean French is the author of several novels written only, and of two biographies (Brigitte Bardot and Patrick Hamilton).

French bibliography

Nicci French

Memory Range / trapped Memory ( The Memory Range , 1997) Flammarion “State of shock” (1997)/France Leisures (2000);
Set of easily deceived ( The Safe House , 1998) Flammarion “Kiosk” (1999);
Fire of ice ( Killing Me Softly , 1999) France Leisures (2000)/Flammarion (2000);
In the skin ( Beneath the Skin , 2000) France Leisures (2001)/Flammarion (2001);
the scarlet Room ( The Red Room , 2001) France Leisures (2001)/Flammarion “Flammarion black” (2003);
With the countries of alive the ( Land off the Living room , 2002) France Leisures (2002)/Flammarion “Flammarion black” (2004);
Half smile ( Secret Spalls , 2003) black River “Blacks” (2005);
Bites of the doubt ( has Last Minute Present / The People Who Went Away , 2006) black River “Blacks” (2006)
Aide me… (2007).

Nicci Gerrard

When we were young ( Things we knew were true , 2003) France Leisures (2004)/Shore-Pocket n° 520 (2005).

Catalog of films

Fire of ice

External bonds

Site of the Editions France Leisures

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