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The first thing that must be said about Michael Robotham is that he's a terrific writer. His characters are rich and real, his narrative flows effortlessly with grace notes of acute observation and touches of wry humor, and he knows how to gradually ramp up tension. The second thing is that those talents can't entirely conceal the formulaic nature of his plots.
In this case, Joe O'Loughlin – a talented psychologist with Parkinson's disease, two daughters, and a wife who won't forgive him for putting his job ahead of his family and his daughters' lives at risk – is cautiously optimistic when his ex invites him to visit. Maybe her hostility is finally softening. Perhaps there's hope of reconciliation. But then he's called to an urgent case. A woman and her daughter have been murdered in a remote farmhouse, the mother stabbed in a frenzy, the daughter peacefully laid out like Sleeping Beauty. The police need his ability to psychologically profile the killer. Though torn between the possibility of repairing his family life and getting drawn into a case, O'Loughlin feels compelled to investigate when a huckster imperils the case by leaking details to the press, touting talents as a "mindhunter" while irritating the police. He also claims to have been trained by Joe O'Loughlin, who frankly cannot remember having him as a student.
If you want to be entertained by a complicated puzzle, a creepy criminal's point of view, emotional turmoil in the lives of series characters, and a mounting sense of threat to the narrator and his family, this novel fits the bill and then some. But jaded readers might wish the author, whose work is both intelligent and compulsively readable, tossed the thriller recipe – including the italicized chapters from the killer's point of view and clichéd manipulation of the reader to create a nail-biter denouement –because his considerable talent deserves better.
§ Barbara Fister is an academic librarian, columnist, and author of the Anni Koskinen mystery series.
Reviewed by Barbara Fister, June 2016
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