Bleed for Me

December 12, 2011
When 14-year-old Sienna Hegarty appears at the back door of psychologist Joe O’Loughlin’s estranged wife, dazed and dripping blood, O’Loughlin knows he must help in this taut thriller from Robotham, the fifth in this U.K. series but the sixth to be published in the U.S. (after 2011’s The Wreckage). Everyone assumes Sienna murdered her father, ex-cop Ray Hegarty, found in the family home outside Bath with his throat slit, because he may have molested Sienna. Volunteering to provide the psychological assessment for the trial, O’Loughlin calls on a London friend, retired police inspector Vincent Ruiz, to investigate on the sly. Together they discover that Sienna’s problems extend beyond her troubled home life, with clues pointing to the school she and O’Loughlin’s teenage daughter, Charlie, attend as well as a high-profile trial involving British National Party members. O’Loughlin, who suffers from Parkinson’s, continues to be an appealingly flawed hero. Agents: Mark Lucas and Richard Pine.