The Last Days of Kira Mullan by Nicci French

Reviewed by Harriet, 20 Feb 2025

The more she said that she shouldn’t be in here, the more convinced they became that she should, she must. Every time she argued her sanity, she confirmed she was deluded.

Way back in the beginning days of Shiny (could it really be eleven years ago?) I reviewed two novels by Nicci French [here and here]. As most people probably know, the name hides the identity of a couple who somehow manage to cooperate in writing their excellent psychological thrillers. I haven’t stopped reading their books since then, but I hadn’t posted any more reviews on here. When I finished this one, their latest, I knew I had to say something about it.

This is the story of Nancy North, an attractive, bright, talented young woman who, at the start of the novel, is recovering from a mental breakdown following the failure of a restaurant she had set up. She’d had previous psychological issues but she’s on medication now and is coping well. She’s living with her loving partner Felix who, as he rather frequently tells her, has dedicated his life to taking care of her. They’ve just moved into a rather unattractive flat in a large house and are beginning to get to know the other occupants. One of these is a pretty young woman, Kira Mullan, who Nancy meets on the doorstep. Nancy is struck by the fact that Kira seems fearful and distressed and wonders what she’s afraid of. Then, the following day, Kira is found in her flat, having apparently taken her own life by hanging. The police, and all the neighbours, have no problem in taking this to be an unfortunate suicide, but Nancy has grave doubts, especially when she meets a young man who had just begun a happy and promising relationship with Kira. However, when she voices her concerns, Felix puts them down to her mental instability, and convinces the neighbours to take the same view, so that they ‘ look at you in a different way. Every odd thing you do, anything you say, if you get a bit sad, a bit angry, people think that might be a sign of you going crazy again’. But Nancy won’t let go, and finally, in a most distressing episode, Felix gets her sectioned.

The central section of the book makes hard reading. Finding yourself in a mental hospital where you know you don’t belong must one of the world’s worst nightmares. The more Nancy proclaims her sanity, the more the psychiatrists and the carers take this as a sign that she’s insane. Despite the horrors of her treatment, she manages to get discharged, basically by pretending to accept that Felix was right to section her. But her troubles are by no means over, and the worst of these is Felix himself, who literally won’t leave her side, and even when she gets away, manages to track her down. He’s persuaded all the neighbours of Nancy’s supposed insanity, so nobody believes her continuing concerns about Kira’s death. Luckily she finally makes contact with Detective Inspector Maud O’Connor, who takes her suspicions seriously and things finally begin to move forward.

What makes this novel especially intriguing is the fact that Nancy can’t entirely trust herself: she does sometimes hear voices, and is afraid she may be imagining things. But, with Maud’s support, she’s able to assert her belief that ‘Being angry is not being haywire. Being suspicious is not being paranoid. Wanting answers is not a sign of paranoid delusion’. But needless to say the reader sometimes wonders if she can really be trusted. What with the increasingly dodgy-seeming neighbours and Felix’s increasingly terrifying stalking, a solution sometimes seems far away. But there is one, of course, and it’s very satisfying.