I must admit I find Robotham’s clinical psychologist protagonist Joe O’Loughlin quite irritating, and I prefer the novels he is not in, like The Secrets She Keeps.
In this novel O’Loughlin maintains his usual fairly inexplicable appeal to women while charging headlessly and relentlessly towards disaster. He is attacked in a hospital, at a bus stop and in an abandoned building after making dubious decisions regarding his personal safety. What is worse is his expression of surprise – nay, astonishment- when he discovers his 12 year old daughter has been traumatised by the instrusion of a knife wielding psychotic stranger into their home. Wouldn’t a psychologist, and father, assume there would be some trauma associated with that experience, and take pains to spend some serious time with his daughter?? O’Loughlin seems too busy chasing people to find out.
That aside, Robotham’s storytelling is so good. The shock of O’Loughlin discovering his father in intensive care and finding out he has had a secret partner for many years is gripping reading. The best bits of the book involve O’Loughlin reconciling his image of his father and mother with a new and shocking reality. The running, chasing, falling down parts ending in a SPOILER ALERT predicable save by the ever stoic Vincent Ruiz are less interesting. With storytelling this good, you don’t need so much contrived action.
