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FICTION/Robotham Michael
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Subjects
Genres
Mystery fiction
Suspense fiction
Published
New York : Mulholland Books 2012.
Language
English
Main Author
Michael Robotham, 1960- (-)
Edition
1st North American ed
Item Description
"Originally published in Great Britain by Sphere"--T.p. verso.
Physical Description
433 p. ; 25 cm
ISBN
9780316221245
Contents unavailable.
Review by New York Times Review

Michael Robotham is one adult author you can really trust around young girls. In SAY YOU'RE SORRY (Mulholland/Little, Brown, $24.99), this Australian crime novelist assigns half the narration to Piper Hadley, who tells her story with the urgency of a latter-day Scheherazade. As we learn from her candid diary entries, Piper was abducted along with her best friend, Natasha McBain, when both were 15, and for the past three years, they've been held captive in a cellar by their kidnapper, a sexual predator they call George. Piper tries not to think too hard about the periodic visits her friend must make to George's quarters, but after Tash comes back bloodied from their latest encounter, she finds a way to escape from the cellar, promising to return with help to rescue Piper. Robotham projects an uncanny approximation of Piper's girlish voice as she shrewdly analyzes the initial reaction to their disappearance, gleaned from the newspaper and television reports shared by their captor. ("People put a shine on us that wasn't there for real, making us into the angels they wanted us to be.") And she philosophically accepts the fickle nature of their fame. ("Rumors began circulating. . . . We were promiscuous. Feral. Delinquent.") But when Tash fails to return and it's Piper's turn to go upstairs with George, her narrative takes on a tone of desperation. Joe O'Loughlin, a clinical psychologist and criminal profiler who often plays the hero in Robotham's psychological suspense thrillers, uses his share of the narrative to let us know what's happening above ground. A husband and wife are brutally murdered in their home during a whiteout blizzard. The barefoot body of a woman is found under the ice of a frozen lake. And O'Loughlin, whose stormy relationship with his own headstrong daughter is a continuing source of grief, finds himself thinking more and more about the lost girls. Robotham is a writer of many voices, sounding exactly like a spoiled teenage girl one minute and, in the next breath, exactly like a frustrated parent. And while he seems to have a lot of sympathy for the families of missing children, the dynamic that truly engages him is the one between fathers and daughters. In this story there are good fathers, bad fathers, even monstrous fathers. The daughters are no saints either. But, for all that, they can't help loving one another. "There really isn't anything gory or gruesome I've not seen or can't somehow handle," Kay Scarpetta lets it be known at the outset of THE BONE BED (Putnam, $28.95), Patricia Cornwell's 20th novel featuring her superstar forensic pathologist, who is currently serving as the chief medical examiner for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Proving her point, the unflappable Scarpetta takes a dramatic plunge into Boston Harbor to retrieve the bound body of a woman ensnared in the same fishing line entangling a 2,500-pound leatherback turtle ("the earth's last living dinosaur") that may be 100 years old. The media glare surrounding the giant turtle also leads to an identification of the murdered woman in the harbor, but not before calling attention to two other missing women, one the wife of a billionaire industrialist on trial for her murder, the other an American paleontologist on a dinosaur dig in Canada. For once, Cornwell resists the impulse to fly her brainy sleuth out on blackops missions for the government agencies that have her on speed dial. The tight plot keeps a local focus, the disconnected deaths are neatly tied together, Scarpetta's annoying friends mainly stay out of her way, and there are plenty of stomach-churning autopsies performed with cutting-edge equipment, including one on a mummified corpse. If you're reading for credibility. Archer Mayor's police procedurals can be highly instructive about crime trends in provincial New England. PARADISE CITY (Minotaur, $25.99) suggests that its small-town crooks have graduated from marijuana nurseries and meth labs to more sophisticated criminal enterprises. Joe Gunther, the raw-boned Vermont detective in these rugged novels, finds the common element in a number of recent burglaries: all the jewelry and objets d'art seem to be finding their way to Northampton, Mass., an old manufacturing town that's been retooled as an upscale art center. As regional operations go, this crime ring (which even has a Web site, LotsforLoot.com) is way more ingenious than the usual dopesmuggling gang. The Danish authors Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis have written another disturbing exposé of social injustice in INVISIBLE MURDER (Soho Crime, $25), which makes the criminal mistreatment of Denmark's disenfranchised Roma population more visible than the authorities might wish. As a favor for a social-worker friend, a Red Cross nurse named Nina Borg travels to a suburb of Copenhagen, where she discovers about 50 Roma living without facilities in an old machine shop. Meanwhile, in Budapest, a promising law student is tossed out of school when it's revealed that he's part Roma. But the awkwardness of the authors' storytelling in this translation by Tara Chace might just cause readers to bail out before all the instances of racism are drawn together. Too many characters and subplots are introduced too quickly, yet it takes forever to turn the story over to Nina, a compassionate heroine who deserves a better chance to shine her light on the terrible things she sees. Two teenage girls have been held captive in a cellar. One has escaped. The other remains to tell us their story.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 11, 2012]
Review by Booklist Review

Three years after British teenagers Piper Hadley and Tash McBain disappear, the case remains unsolved. Then, in the midst of a blinding blizzard, a man and woman are brutally murdered in the farmhouse where Tash once lived. The local police bring Augie Shaw, a mentally disabled man, into custody, but clinical psychologist Joe O'Loughlin is certain he didn't do it. O'Loughlin has been working with police on the two cases, though at the beginning, they gave him little credence or respect. (When they called him Professor, you could practically hear their collective sneer.) O'Loughlin doubts Shaw has the intellectual capacity to mastermind an abduction, much less a homicide. But what evil soul did? When Tash's body is found at the bottom of a nearby frozen lake, hope dwindles but doesn't disappear. If Tash escaped the clutches of her abductor at least temporarily, perhaps her friend Piper is still alive. Australian investigative journalist and novelist Robotham (Bleed for Me, 2012) creates relentless suspense as law enforcement and O'Loughlin close in on a sinister soul with a deranged criminal mind.--Block, Allison Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In Ned Kelly Award-winner Robotham's taut seventh psychological thriller featuring psychologist Joe O'Loughlin and retired cop Vincent Ruiz (after 2011's The Wreckage), the Oxford police approach Joe for help in profiling a suspect, Augie Shaw. Accused of murdering Patricia and William Heyman in the couple's farmhouse during a blizzard, Shaw strikes Joe as an unlikely killer since he suffers from delusions and possibly schizophrenia. Interwoven with Joe's investigation are journal entries by 18-year-old Piper Hadley, who was kidnapped-along with her best friend, Tash McBain-three years earlier and is still being held. Known as "the Bingham Girls," Piper and Tash dominated the news but when no clues turned up, it was assumed they ran away. When links arise between the Heyman murders and the unsolved kidnapping, Joe and Vincent work to reopen the girls' case and find them before it's too late. Robotham doesn't shy away from the unsettling, but he never seeks merely to titillate. Agent, Richard Pine, Inkwell Management. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Australia-based writer Robotham's insightful psychologist Joe O'Loughlin once again tackles a tough case involving crimes that, at first blush, do not seem related. Two young girls from a small English village disappear one night after attending a local funfair. Gorgeous, promiscuous Tash and quiet, athletic Piper had little in common, but became fast friends. Tash was brilliant, but underachieving. Her lower-middle-class family was troubled, and she attended a prestigious private school on scholarship, while Piper's mismatched former-model mother and wealthy banker father lived in the area's toniest neighborhood. While their disappearance initially sparked teams of searchers and outrage from the local citizenry, it simmered down once the police become convinced the girls were runaways. Three years later, the girls are still missing. In the meantime, O'Loughlin and his teenage daughter are trying to rebuild their fractured relationship, damaged by his estrangement from his wife. While attending a conference, police seek out the savvy profiler and ask for his help in solving a terrible double murder. As investigators wade through the blood bath of a crime scene, they learn that the home is connected to the girls' disappearances. In fact, while the couple killed was no relation to Tash, the home in which it occurred was where she'd lived before she vanished. While police puzzle through the homicide, another body is found, but this time it's an unidentified young woman found frozen in the ice of a nearby pond. O'Loughlin wants no part of either case but is soon sucked into helping police while racing against the clock to prevent another tragedy. Robotham's writing ranges from insightful to superb and he has no qualms about burdening his hero, O'Loughlin, with not only a broken personal life, but also a broken body courtesy of a case of Parkinson's, making him not only more human, but more likable. Subtle, smart, compelling and blessed with both an intelligent storyline and top-notch writing, this book will grab readers from page one and not let go until the final sentence.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.