The Last Days of Kira Mullan

How much is the truth worth when no one believes you? In The Last Days of Kira Mullan, Nicci French construct a crime mystery in which the greatest danger is not necessarily the killer, but everyone else’s conviction that the person searching for the truth is incapable of recognizing it.

Unlike their novel The Unheard, this time they build a much more convincing narrative foundation, initially driven by an unreliable narrator. And although Maud once again remains somewhat on the periphery of the story, when she is given more time on the page, her character becomes considerably more fully developed than in Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?

But first, the story. As I mentioned, the novel focuses on Nancy North, our seemingly unreliable narrator. She and her partner Felix move into a new apartment after she is discharged from a psychiatric hospital. Nancy dreams of regaining control over her life, opening another restaurant, and, with that goal in mind, follows her prescribed treatment carefully.

But in the new apartment, the “voices” she hears return. And when her neighbor – the young and energetic Kira Mullan, is found dead, Nancy becomes convinced that the investigators have made a mistake by closing the case as a suicide. Nancy finds herself the only person willing to do everything she can to prove that Kira was murdered.

In the process, she earns the anger of both Felix and the other residents of the building. She gradually loses control over her own life, while Felix uses her vulnerability to isolate and discredit her. The most frightening part is that he does not even need to resort to overt violence. All he has to do is convince everyone around her that Nancy cannot be trusted.

As for Maud, the case is initially assigned to one of her colleagues, but after meeting Nancy, she spots a significant omission. Despite her doubts and the indirect criticism from her superior that she is “not a team player,” Maud decides to begin an investigation of her own and discover what really happened during the last days of Kira Mullan.

In fact, Kira’s murder is only the backdrop against which Nicci French explore psychological abuse, control, and manipulation. They show how easily a psychiatric diagnosis can become grounds for stripping someone of credibility, the right to trust their own judgment, and even control over their own life. One of the hardest moments in the novel is Nancy’s rehospitalization. Certain scenes are described so vividly that it becomes almost impossible not to share Nancy’s sense of helplessness. I admit that at that point I simply wanted the novel to end. But then I kept reading.

And I think that was when I realized just how completely Nicci French had pulled me into the story. I no longer wanted to continue simply to find out who the killer was. I wanted to continue because of Nancy.

And when Maud listens to Nancy’s story, shows empathy, and tries to help her, you somehow expect it, and yet you still feel relieved that Nancy finally has an ally. That is certainly not the kind of emotion you normally expect to feel while reading a psychological thriller.

In fact, Maud and Nancy make an interesting pair. In a sense, they find themselves on the same side of the barricade: one is fighting to be heard, while the other refuses to accept the institutional convenience of not listening.

As I mentioned earlier, Maud’s character is also considerably more developed here. Beyond seeing her as a brilliant detective, we see how deeply she is affected by the cumbersome police system around her, where officers protect one another even when obvious mistakes have been made.

We also see her attempts to rebuild her personal life after separating from the person she loves. And so, from the very beginning, we know that Kira Mullan was murdered. Once Maud, representing the authorities, becomes convinced of that as well, every one of Nancy’s neighbors becomes a potential suspect.

I liked The Last Days of Kira Mullan considerably more than Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?, and the BOOKLOVERS rating is 4.2 out of 5 stars. My only serious reservation is the ending. Not so much the revelation of the killer, but the resolution of the psychological storyline, which throughout the novel interested me far more than the murder itself. After building that conflict so carefully, Nicci French resort to overly dramatic and convenient plot devices to bring Nancy’s story to a close. And that comes at the expense of the realism that made everything leading up to it so powerful.