A decent but mildly disappointing read from Michael Robotham. Jodie, a teenage ice skater and apparent “good” girl, has been found dead in a park while another girl, Evie, a so called “bad” girl, languishes in a secure psychiatric facility. Forensic psychologist Cyrus Haven, a new character from Robotham, assists police with their investigations into Jodie’s death.
We’ve seen most of this before. The “good” girl turns out to be not so good – a.k.a. normal. The “bad” girl is largely brittle and uncommunicative but our hero, Cyrus, finds a way to bring her out of her shell. With unlikely speed, he becomes Evie’s foster carer and even gets her a dog, which allows her to express her previously buried soft side. The dog is called Poppy and it gets lost and then SPOILER ALERT they find it again. Yawn.
Cyrus seems to have essentially the same personality as Joe O’Loughlin, Robotham’s forensic psychologist protagonist from some of his previous novels. They’re both decent people but stunningly naive, and their contributions to police investigations make you wonder why we bother with police investigation into murders – just let the forensic psychologists do the job! And Cyrus has one particularly irritating quirk – he refuses to own a mobile phone. He won’t even have a landline in his house for reasons that remain unexplained. When someone wants to contact him they send him a message on his pager (remember pagers, from E.R.?) and he has to leave his house and find a payphone (remember payphones?) or go the local shop to ask if he can make a phone call. The inefficiency of this system is staggering to the point of being unbelievable, especially when he’s involved in time sensitive police investigations.
That said, Robotham does solve the mystery of what happened to Jodie, and what her life was actually like, in a very satisfying manner. His characters, even the minor ones, are well drawn. Lots of teasers in this novel about the complexities of Cyrus’ background, and Evie’s, leave me in no doubt there will be more in this series. And hopefully Robotham will get his protagonist a flamin’ phone in the next novel.
