December Minireviews

The Other Wife by Michael Robotham – 4*

//published 2018//

I really enjoyed reading the Joseph O’Laughlin series last year.  Joe is a middle-aged psychologist who, at the beginning of the series, is diagnosed with Parkinson’s.  While the books can be read in any order or as stand-alones, they really work best if they are read in order, as you watch Joe and his life grow and change.  When I read the then-last-book in the series last July, I was excited to see that Robotham had another book in the series scheduled for late 2018.  Close Your Eyes had a rather weird ending, and I really wanted more for Joe, whom I actually really love.

The Other Wife was an addictive read that I was glad I picked up on a lazy Sunday, as I pretty much wanted to do nothing but read it.  Robotham easily reestablished me into Joe’s life and, per usual, jumped right into the action.  As always, Joe’s good friend Vincent Ruiz is one of my favorite characters, so I was glad to see him back.  It has also been fun to see Joe’s daughters grow older throughout the series, and in this book his oldest is at university and starting to make her own way in the world.

Reflecting later after I finished the book, I realized that Robotham honestly got a bit sloppy at the end.  One of the main characters (the “other wife”)  wasn’t really given any closure, which seemed quite important given the circumstances.  But I just couldn’t really justify knocking off a half star for that as the book had been so thoroughly engrossing while I was reading it.  I definitely need at least ten more books in this series, so hopefully Robotham is on it!

Early Candlelight by Maud Hart Lovelace – 3.5*

//published 1929//

Several years ago I read the Betsy-Tacy books by this author.  Despite being exactly the kind of books I would have loved growing up, I somehow didn’t get around to reading them until adulthood – and they were a complete delight!  Early Candlelight, however, is Lovelace’s historical fiction, a tale of love and survival set on the 1830’s Minnesota frontier.  While this book was an enjoyable read, and had an excellent sense of time and place, it was also a rather sad book on the whole (frontier life wasn’t super easy).  I also spent most of the book being a little confused because I couldn’t really get my head around the “class difference” between the main character, Dee, and her love interest, Jasper.  Jasper spends a lot of time dwelling on Dee’s unsuitability (and actually so does Dee), but I couldn’t understand why in the world an intelligent, educated, hardworking woman wouldn’t make him a good wife, especially considering that everyone in the area knew and respected Dee and thought she was a wonderful person??  Apparently the people in the fort were trying to cling to their class distinctions from back east, but I just didn’t get it, so it made parts of the story seem contrived to me, even though I’m sure that Lovelace was being historically accurate.

All in all, while this was a nice one-time read, it didn’t speak to me on the same level as the sweet and inspiring Betsy-Tacy books.

The Coming of Bill by P.G. Wodehouse – 3.5*

//published 1919//

This book is often mentioned as Wodehouse’s attempt at a “serious” novel, and it certainly lacks the lighthearted frivolity of most of Wodehouse’s works.  The main characters of this book are not, in fact, named Bill, but instead are Ruth and Kirk.  Ruth is a society girl with plenty of money.  Her mother passed away years ago, and she lives with her grumpy, busy father and her self-important brother, Bailey.  Ruth and Bailey have an aunt who is “famous” for writing books and articles about how people should really live.  The aunt is obsessed with self-improvement, with exercise, and with eugenics – she believes that it is the responsibility of every human to make themselves as fit as they can be, and to find the spouse who will be the ideal breeding partner so that the human race can be bettered through the generations.  When the aunt meets Kirk, a “fine specimen” who is also an artist living off a legacy, she decides he will be the perfect match for Ruth.  Luckily, Ruth and Kirk feel the same way.

If you’re looking for Wodehouse humor and froth, this book is a bit of a fail.  But if you’re just looking for a decent novel with interesting characters, it’s not a bad story.  Wodehouse is gently poking fun at several different things throughout, but at the heart of it all the story is about Kirk and Ruth growing up enough to take responsibility for their own lives, choices, and their child (the Bill of the title).  While this isn’t a book I would return to again and again, as a Wodehouse connoisseur it was interesting read just to see this stage of his writing.

Farmer Giles of Ham by J.R.R. Tolkien – 4*

//published 1949//

My local library always has a few shelves of discard books for a quarter, and if I’m feeling dangerous I take a moment to browse them when I go in.  A while back I found a very nice hardcover copy of this book and picked it up.  While this wasn’t a mind-blowing book or anything, it definitely was a fun and entertaining little children’s story about a rather pompous farmer and, more importantly, a dragon.  I can definitely see this being a fun read-aloud book – I think that kids would get a kick out of the drama.  Tolkien’s dry humor is in full force throughout and I found myself snickering on more than one occasion.  There isn’t a lot of depth to this one, but it was a fun little read nonetheless.

Close Your Eyes // by Michael Robotham

//published 2016//

Well, this is (currently) the last of Joseph O’Laughlin books, and I’m quite, quite sorry to see them end.  Although I did check Robotham’s website – and he claims another book is coming sometime next year!  So I’ll have that to look forward to.

Wow, so I have really mixed feelings about this book.  Overall, the story was quite gripping and the pacing almost frenetic…  which, in retrospect, it almost feels like that was a bit of camouflage for the fact that this mystery didn’t seem quite as tight as most of the earlier ones – there were several times that it felt like Joe should have been more “on” a clue or lead; Vincent’s involvement also seemed rather cursory.   We were back with Joe’s first-person narration for this one, which I never like quite as well as the third person (despite the fact that I do quite like Joe).  There also felt like there was a LOT going on in Joe’s personal life, and while it was handled well on the whole, I still found myself wondering things like, “Would Joe’s daughter really go follow up on a clue instead of seeing her mum off to the hospital for surgery?” or, “Is it really more important to go talk to this random person than it is to spend some time with a family member having a major crisis?”

The biggest turn-off for this book was definitely the opening scene, a very bizarre and far-too-detailed scene involving sex and violence that left me feeling quite… dirtied.  Like now that is stuck in my head forever, and I don’t really want it to be there.  If I hadn’t already read all the other books in this series and known that that wasn’t really “what they were like,” I’m not sure I would have gotten over that opening scene.  It was just.  Ick.  And it felt completely superfluous, like it was just there for the shock factor.

But, setting all of that aside – I still could barely put down this book.  It was completely engaging, and I was QUITE impatient with my husband who kept interrupting me during the last few chapters when I just wanted to FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS.

And then I finally reached the end of the thriller part and took a deep breath, ready to read the last chapter and see all the little loose ends tied up – and there was a complete blindside in the last few pages.  Like I literally felt like someone had taken that heavy, hardcover book and cracked me over the head with it.  I was not expecting that last plot twist.  It felt so abrupt!  Plus, super weird, like I had to read a few paragraphs over to make sure that what I thought had happened had really happened…  it was just… strange.  A very strange way to end the book. Quite strange.  I didn’t like it.

Still, a 4/5 for a book that was quite intense and that I overall enjoyed (until the very end).  I’ll definitely be checking out more of Robotham’s books, and eagerly looking for another story with Joe & Company, hopefully next year.  This has been an excellent series and one I definitely recommend – as long as you feel like your heart can handle the intensity!

#7 for the #20BooksofSummer!

Watching You // by Michael Robotham

//published 2015//

After a few weeks of basically reading nothing but Dee Henderson, I was ready to jump into something new.  I’ve been really wanting to read the last two books in the Joseph O’Laughlin series, Watching You and Close Your Eyes, so I was pretty stoked to jump back into the series.  I’ve really come to like Joe and his family a lot, and his friend, Vincent Ruiz, is one of my favorite characters ever.

This book didn’t disappoint – I finished it within 24 hours of starting it, reading in huge chunks when I could, and a page or two at a time every time I walked through the room.  It was so intense, and I think it may be my favorite in the series (although Shatter is a close second).

One thing that I liked about this book is that Robotham switched to third person narration, which I always thinks works much better with present tense (if present tense we must).  For this book, it was a big part of what kept the tension ratcheting – the narration was always jumping to where the action was.,

In so many thrillers, it seems like a cop-out to have someone have serious mental illness issues, but it works in this series because Joe is a psychologist, so it’s only natural that he is going to have people who fit the ‘unreliable narrator’ category, and his patient Marnie definitely does just that.  Marnie’s husband has been missing for over a year, and she’s desperate for money.  The insurance company won’t release the life insurance until he is declared dead, and the government won’t declare him dead until he’s been missing for seven years.  (And apparently Marnie was never added to their bank account, so she can’t access that, either?  That bit seemed like a stretch to me, I  mean they’ve been married for several years and have two children, doesn’t it seem like they would have some kind of joint account??)

Marnie finally gets access to some of her husband’s stuff that he left at work when he disappeared.  In the box is a scrapbook of sorts – apparently, Daniel was working on a big surprise for Marnie, interviewing and videoing people who have known and loved her throughout her life, collecting memories and happy anecdotes.  Except as Marnie – and Joe – begin to work through the interviews, it turns out that not everyone remembers Marnie with pleasure.  In fact, several people seem to hate her, and Marnie has no idea why.

The pacing of this book is what makes it perfect.  As we slowly learn bits of Marnie’s past, each new dollop of information propels the reader on to the next bit – every answer only leads to more questions.  The slow realization that bad things happen to everyone who has done Marnie wrong, the questions about the unknown narrator from whom we get a few pages every couple of chapters, everything comes through at just the right time.  I was racing through this book, desperate to know the answers – all of which, by the way, were answered satisfactorily.

I wanted to give this book a 5/5 rating, but there were just a few scenes that held me back.  First off, this book definitely seemed to have more sex in it than others, and there is one bit in particular where an adult carries on a several-month assignation with a fifteen-year-old, which is downright creepy.  And that’s never presented as normal or healthy, but when the identity of the adult is revealed, it really seemed a bit out-of-character with everything else we’d learned about this person, so it was a little strange.  It sort of came across as though the whole thing was the fault of the teen, and the adult’s responsibility in the situation was sort of glossed over.  And the whole chapter talking about it went into a bit tooo much detail for my delicate sensibilities to enjoy.

So in the end, it’s a 4.5/5 read for me.  This book will definitely read better within the context of the series, but I think could also work as a standalone.  It’s definitely recommended, but only if you have some blocks of time on your hands, because you will not want to put this one down!

#6 for #20BooksofSummer!

Say You’re Sorry // by Michael Robotham

//published 2012//

In Robotham’s sixth outing for the Joseph O’Laughlin series, Joe himself is back as the main narrator (present tense, unfortunately, although Robotham does write it fairly well).  Some time has passed since the last book, but much of Joe’s life looks the same: still estranged from his wife (not divorced), but still working with her to raise their two daughters.  He has moved back to London, and the book begins with his daughter Charlie coming to stay with him for the weekend.

The other narrator of the story is Piper.  Piper was kidnapped three years before Joe’s story begins, and she and her friend Tash have been held in a small basement room ever since.  Her story is interspersed between Joe’s chapters, as we learn the back story of how Piper ended up where she is.  In Joe’s world, a girl is found dead and is identified as Tash.  In Piper’s story, we find out just how this all came to be.

Robotham balances these two narratives perfectly, giving just the right of information from one before switching to the other.  While Joe’s story takes up the majority of the book, Piper’s bits are critically important and emotionally devastating.  This isn’t a pretty story, as it involves kidnapping, rape, and even some torture, but Robotham handles all of this deftly.  We are told enough so that we know what we need to know, but he doesn’t smother the reader in excruciating details.

The tension really ratchets up in this book, and I found myself racing through the pages to find out whether or not Piper survives.  My only complaint was that while the clues were there to point to the true criminal, I also found it hard to believe that he had disguised himself so well.

There are always minor quibbles.  I’m still aggravated with Joe’s wife, who seems to think that it’s perfectly acceptable to keep Joe stringing along for years instead of just making a final decision as to whether or not she wants a divorce, especially when her reasons for not wanting him to stay with her seem flimsy at best.  I really miss the Julianne of the early books – I thought that she added an intriguing dimension to the story.  Ah well.  On the other hand, I’m really a bit in love with Vincent Ruiz, who reminds me quite a bit of Agatha Christie’s Superintendent Battle.  He is definitely my favorite character.

All in all, this has been a very enjoyable series so far.  While I’m definitely getting more out of them by reading them in order, they also seem like they would be perfectly readable as stand-alones.  I really appreciate Robotham’s ability to tackle some intense subjects without making his stories too bleak – although his willingness to kill off various people means that while I’m fairly certain that Joe himself will survive, I’m still rather worried about everyone else: the tension is real!

4/5 for this outing; recommended.

March Minireviews – Part 1

Usually, I only post a group of minireviews for books that have just been sort of meh for me, leaving me with not a whole lot to say about the story.  But this month I’ve been super busy with work and other projects and just simply haven’t had time for reviews.  I really struggled through a reading slump the end of February and into March, but over the last couple of weeks have been back in the groove, which means I actually have quite the little pile of books waiting to be reviewed.  Unfortunately, I just don’t have the time to really unpack all the ins and outs, so I’m going to try to just give each read a few paragraphs… hopefully I don’t get too carried away…

Dead End Close by Dominic Utton

//published 2017//

I actually started a whole long review of this book but then got really carried away.  I disliked this book so much that the whole review was turning into a rather incoherent rant, so maybe I can just summarize a briefer, coherent rant here.  I actually rather enjoyed Utton’s first book, Martin Harbottle’s Appreciation of Time, and I think that added to the disappointment that I felt about Dead End Close.  This book focuses on several households all on the same dead-end street in Oxford.  There’s a bit of mystery/thriller aspect, but at the end of the day this book was just overwhelmingly depressing.  No one has a happy life, no one has a happy ending.  All of my notes on this book end with “???” because I just didn’t get this book at all.  There’s this weird guy meandering through the story (and sometimes narrating it) with a clipboard, and we are given the impression that he’s a supernatural/angelic being of some kind (???), but apparently there for observation purposes only has he does diddly-squat to prevent anything from happening.  Throughout the story, all the lives that started pretty bad to begin with only get worse.

But the biggest reason that this book gets 0/5 stars for me is that a huge part of the plot centers around a trio of Oxford boys who are trying to get into a club, and the initiation process requires them to rape a girl, video it, and then get the video to go viral.  This whole part of the book literally made me ill to read, it was so disturbing and dark and gross.  And maybe I could have gotten around this if this book had had some kind of point, but it didn’t.  The whole story was just completely pointless.  It went no where, there was no character development, terrible things happened to everyone, people get raped and killed, and a heavy sense of hopelessness lingers on every page.

I think I was especially irked when I got to the end and Utton attempted to whitewash his entire story by acting like, somehow, there was a message of hope.  Like, “Oh wow, sometimes bad things happen, but there’s always hope!”  Yeah, that doesn’t really fly with me when the only “hope” part of your story is in the next-to-last paragraph of the entire book.

Dead End Close was given to me free of charge from the publishers, and this is my obviously very honest review.  I hated every word of this book and wouldn’t even recommend it to someone I didn’t like.  Weirdly, I would still read another of Utton’s books, though, because I enjoyed Harbottle, but this one was flat dreadful.

The Wreckage by Michael Robotham

//published 2011//

They say that a book can impact your mood.  I think this is true, but I also think that sometimes my mood impacts the book.  I picked up The Wreckage (the fifth in the Joseph O’Laughlin series) during the height of my reading slump and could not get into it.  And even though I eventually finished the book, it never really gripped me.  I can’t say for sure if that was the book’s fault or mine, but I definitely felt very meh towards this story the whole way through.

I think a large part of this was because it didn’t feel nearly as personal as the other books in this series.  The other books have dealt with tight, domestic-type crimes (kidnapping, murder, robbery, etc.), but this one was more political, following a storyline in Iraq, where a reporter believes that several bank robberies are connected; and London, where our old friend Vincent Ruiz finds himself entangled in a complicated web of disappearances, robberies, and embezzlement.

The story was done well, and the present-tense that Robotham insists on using made more sense as a third person narrative.  But my personal disinterest meant that I didn’t read this book very closely, and consequently it felt disjointed to me.  It left me with a 3/5 rating, but I think that it will be better when I read through this series again.

The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck

//published 2017//

This was another ARC, but one that I thankfully enjoyed a great deal more than Dead End Close.  This story drifts back and forth in time, following the lives of three German women before, during, and after World War II.  While this wasn’t exactly a cheerful read, it was a very engaging one.  Shattuck handles the shifts in time perfectly, giving information about the lives of these women at just the right time.  It is not a mystery, but each of the women has her own secrets that are only gradually revealed.

It was quite fascinating to read a story about “everyday” Germans.  Marianne, passionate about the resistance; Benita, rather naive and sometimes willfully blind; Ania, caught up in the dream of a better life and failing to see how the promises were built on shifting sand.  The language is lovely and the characters are well-drawn, although I wish that we saw more of Marianne’s thoughts and actions.  She is weirdly both the center of the story and yet in the background of it.

While I don’t see myself returning to this book time and again, I would definitely read another of Shattuck’s books, and recommend this one to anyone who enjoys history from the perspective of ordinary people struggling to see what is right.  4/5.

The Fourth Wish by Lindsay Ribar

//published 2014//

This book is the sequel to a lighthearted YA novel that I read in February, The Art of Wishing.  While Wishing didn’t really blow my mind with its awesomeness, it was still an entertaining and pleasant read, and I was expecting more of the same from The Fourth Wish.  Unfortunately, it was overall pretty terrible.  In this book, Margo is struggling to adjust to her new life as a genie.  For some reason, Ribar decided that the overwhelming majority of people who get a hold of a genie would use their wishes to find some kind of sexual fulfillment.  Color me crazy, but if I had three wishes for anything, I really don’t think any of them would involve sex…???  Plus, we also have to spend a lot of time nattering on about how genies can be either male or female (I mean the same genie can be either), and how this doesn’t change who they are on the inside, and they can still love each other no matter their outward apperance, aw how romantic except why so boring and consequently not actually romantic at all.

I skimmed large portions of this book hoping to actually find a story, but there wasn’t one.  Margo was a total whiner in this book, spending most of  her time being a jealous girlfriend.  I don’t really have high hopes for her relationship with Oliver, especially since they are not both timeless, eternal beings.  Like I don’t think this relationship is going to last five months, much less five centuries.

In the end, 2/5 and nothing that inspired me to find out if Ribar has written anything else.

Bleed for Me // by Michael Robotham

//published 2012//

This is the fourth installment of the Joseph O’Laughlin series, and Joe himself is once again our narrator – and once again in the first person, present tense.  Although I have to say that the tense didn’t bother me as much this time – I think Robotham is getting better at it, sometimes having Joe explaining what just happened instead of in the moment, which makes the narration somewhat more believable.

While Bleed for Me was just as intense as the earlier books, I didn’t enjoy it as much as Shatter.  I think this was partially because the victims/intended victims were very young.  There is something inherently uncomfortable about people who prey on the young and innocent, and consequently this book was disturbing to me.  It was done well, and in many ways addressed the dangers of placing too much trust in people we don’t really know, but it was still troubling.

The personal troubles between Joe and his estranged wife continue, leaving me feeling consistently annoyed with the wife, who I actually really liked in the first couple of books.  But she basically comes out and says that she can’t handle the person Joe has “become” since he found out he has Parkinson’s, which is why they have now been separated – not divorced – for two years.  So here’s Joe, gradually dying of a degenerative disease, separated from his home and beautiful daughters because his wife feels like Joe is too morbid (or something, I’m honestly still not clear on what her issue with Joe really is – she just keeps saying things like “I don’t love you in the right way” whatever the heck that means), and that just seems cruel.  Sure, they still share duties with the daughters and work together on parenting, but it’s not the same as living with them, which is obvious from the way that Joe hangs around his old house like a stray dog, hoping for glimpses of all the little family-life details that he’s missing.

I guess I just don’t understand why that makes a better background story for Joe than having him stay married, with him and his wife working together through the difficulties of life.  Instead, it’s just another couple (or at least half a couple) who are willing to give up on over two decades of relationship because things have gotten hard.

ANYWAY I do love series like this because I love recurring characters and seeing a bit more of them every time.  Vincent Ruiz is still one of my faves, just as gruff and honey badger-ish as ever –

Political correctness is not one of Ruiz’s strong suits.  He once told me that being politically correct was like pretending you could pick up a dog turd by the clean end.

He’s also a great friend for Joe, and I love the way that their friendship has progressed since the first book.

The story itself was very gritty and done well.  The bad guy was so slimy, and watching him slither through loopholes was incredibly frustrating.  However, I felt like there were more aspects of this book that didn’t fit together than there have been in the earlier books.  While we got explanations for most of the stuff that happened, some things are just left as implied that it was because of this other guy being involved.  The mystery kind of stretched beyond the initial tragedy, and it sometimes felt like some of the connections between this crime and another were a little forced.

Still, I did enjoy this installment, and am curious to see what else Robotham has in store as the series progresses.  3/5.

Shatter // by Michael Robotham

//published 2008//

Well, look at this!  I promised you all this morning that I was going to start getting back into the blogging groove, and here we are with an actual book review already!  :-D

The third book in Robotham’s Joseph O’Laughlin series was absolutely addicting.  I had trouble putting this book down.  It was terrifying in that way that really good thrillers can be.  Robotham managed to create a story where the reader knows who the bad guy is pretty early on – and it only adds to the tension..

Overall, the premise of this book – that this murderer controls his victims through fear and manipulation and never actually physically sees or touches them – and yet they die – is so scary.  It was brilliant.  From the very beginning, when Joe watches a woman jump off a bridge, the fear ratchets up with every chapter.  With snippets of narrative from the killer, we get glimpses into the why and how of what is happening.  This isn’t a gory book at all.  Robotham doesn’t need it to keep his readers glued to the pages.

The first-person-present-tense continues to nag (why, why, why), but I found myself liking Joe even more in this book.  It was great fun to see Ruiz from the last book – now retired but just as Superintendent Battle-ish – and to see how character lives in general are progressing, because despite the excellent pacing of the book, there is still time for character development and background that really helps to fill out the book.

Speaking of which, I ended the book feeling quite frustrated with Joe’s life.  Mild spoiler, but his wife decides that they should separate at the end, and part of her reasoning behind this is because Joe got involved with this case at all.  But this made no sense to me.  Literally, a woman died because no one cared to find out what was happening with her – that’s the whole point of the first death.  Several people saw this woman on her way to jump off the bridge, and despite the fact that there were all these suspicious signs that something wasn’t right, no one cared.

But Joe cares, and it’s that caring that drives him to continue to assisting with the case.  In the end, I felt like his wife didn’t appreciate or deserve him.  Her attitude towards Joe really aggravated me, and he’s just so patient and resigned like, “Oh, she’s probably right, I’ve been rather self-centered lately worrying about the fact that I’m dying of Parkinson’s disease, so I suppose it’s perfectly reasonable that she wants to throw away our twenty years of marriage instead of trying to work through our problems, nbd.”  Except he said all that with no sarcasm.

Still, in the end this was a solid 4/5 read and I’m intrigued to continue with the series.  This book could be read as a stand alone, but I think that reading it in context of the preceding books helps to give it context.

Lost // by Michael Robotham

//published 2006//

This is the second book in the Joseph O’Laughlin series, but in this book, Joe is more of a secondary character.  The primary protagonist, and narrator, if this story is Vincent Ruiz, a homicide detective that we met in the last book.  I really liked Ruiz in Suspect – for some reason he reminded me a great deal of Agatha Christie’s Superintendent Battle, that sort of stolid, steady character whose intelligence tends to be underestimated because he isn’t a chatterbox.

Ruiz’s story starts one night when he is pulled out of the Thames – almost dead, a bullet wound in his leg, and absolutely no recollection of how he got there.  Ruiz’s only clue to his own activities is a picture of Mickey Carlyle that was in his pocket.  Mickey is one of Ruiz’s great failures – a young girl who disappeared out of her apartment building one day and was never seen again.  While a man was convicted of Mickey’s murder, her body has never been found, and Ruiz  has never been completely convinced that she actually died.  With Ruiz’s superiors dead set against reopening any kind of case around Mickey, Ruiz is on his own trying to piece together the events that led up to his near-death experience in the river.

Lost is a twisty kind of book.  Ruiz is a likable character, although I didn’t always agree with his decisions.  Once again, the first-person present tense narrative made me roll my eyes a lot as it genuinely makes no sense, but on the whole I was able to look past it to enjoy the story.  For me, the biggest hang up on the logical end was the fact that Ruiz still has a bullet wound in his leg and is hobbling about on crutches, but suddenly starts dashing all over London, including down into the sewers.  I found myself writing a note with lots of question marks when I read this bit –

“Any cuts?  Cover them up with waterproof Band-Aids,” says Barry, tossing a box toward me.  “Weil’s disease – you get that from rat urine.  It gets into a cut and ends up in your brain.”

So did he manage to cover the bullet wound with lots of waterproof Band-Aids or…????

But setting that aside, Lost was pretty engaging.  It was fun to see Joe again, and I rather like the relationship between Joe and Ruiz.  I’m interested to see where Robotham takes the next book – it looks like Joe will be back in the narrator’s seat again.  All in all, a solid 3.5/5 for Lost – and if it wasn’t for the clumsy choice of narration tense, it probably would have been a 4/5.

Suspect // by Michael Robotham

//published 2005//

Now that I’ve finished the Amanda Jaffe series, I’m ready to delve into something new.  My next mystery series is the Joseph O’Laughlin series by Michael Robotham, first brought to my attention by FictionFan, who has reviewed several books from this series, including Suspect.  I read another Robotham book this summer (a stand-alone), Life or Death.  While I found it to be an engaging read, I never really connected with the protagonist.  Still, I didn’t dislike it, and was interested to read another of Robotham’s books.

The narrator is O’Laughlin himself, a middle-aged psychiatrist.  He has a comfortable practice, a beautiful wife, and an adorable daughter, and, on the whole, a contented life.  However, O’Laughlin has just discovered that he is in the early stages of Parkinson’s.  Struggling to come to grips with the news, he makes a mistake that will definitely come back to haunt him.

Meanwhile, a girl’s body is found.  Through a series of events, O’Laughlin is asked to examine the body.  He is surprised to find that she is not, after all, a stranger to him…

It’s a twisty tale with a lot of action.  On the whole, O’Laughlin comes across as likable.  He’s not afraid to say when he’s been wrong, and I liked the way that he grew as a person throughout – he is very self-assured in the beginning, and it was good to see him willing to look at his possible blind spots.  Mild spoiler, I was pleased to get to the end and see O’Laughlin and his wife working through their difficulties, but the book-flap of a later book mentions that he is struggling through a divorce, so I am sad to hear that, once again, we will have a situation where a happily married couple just can’t make it work any more, because apparently people don’t know how to work through their troubles like adults.  (But I’m sure that will be a complaint for that future book.)

The story is written in first-person present-tense, which I hate in general, and especially hate in a thriller.  How in the world am I supposed to believe that O’Laughlin is narrating things like his own almost-death!?  And I never really understand a FPPT story that then has an epilogue…???

I wonder if Robotham always intended for this book to turn into a series, because in some ways this book reads better as a standalone.  I never for a moment believed that O’Laughlin could be the criminal because he goes on to be the main character of several books, and I really doubt that he’s doing that from prison.  But as a standalone, the premise that O’Laughlin himself is the murderer could have added a whole other level of intrigue to the story.

Still, even with the knowledge that O’Laughlin must be the fall guy, the whole concept of why and how kept me reading as fast as I could.  There were definitely moments where I found myself raising my eyebrows skeptically, but on the whole the story hangs together and produces a satisfying ending.

While there is some moderate language throughout, it is definitely not completely filled with cursing, and there is a delightful lack of gore as well.  Robotham relies on his story to provide the thrill, not gruesome crime scenes.

I’m definitely looking forward to the next book in the series.  Overall, Suspect was a strong read – 4/5 and recommended.

PS Apparently this book has been published as both The Suspect and just Suspect.  This makes no sense to me.  Why do publishers do this?  It really seems to me that an author ought to choose the title first, then publish the book and then keep the same title no matter where the book is published.  This whole bit where the book changes names depending on which English-speaking country is appears in is quite aggravating.