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.

Book Summary

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.