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.

September 15, 2011

Trouble for psychologist Joe O'Loughlin, a Robotham standby: 14-year-old Sienna Hegarty arrives at his doorstep covered with the blood of her father, a retired cop found murdered back at home. Sienna has no memory of what happened--and not a lot of grief regarding her father's death. Is she a traumatized bystander or a killer? Also coming from Mulholland in February: the paperback reprint of Shatter, which Stephen King picked as a top ten thriller of 2009.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from December 15, 2011
This remarkable novel offers everything those literary detective novels ought to but usually don't. The prose is beautiful but understated, with no striving for style. The characters are bright, funny, and touching. Ideas are entertainedentertaining, tooand psychological insights are included. And, oh yes, it's also one helluva crime story, with suspense, chases, deductions, and startling revelations in the last pages. The hero is psychologist Joe O'Loughlin, whose career in Bath, England, is forever getting sidetracked by problems with health, women, children, cops, and most recently, a blood-soaked neighbor girl who appears on his doorstep. His attempts to help her by exploring her memories parallel the steps in a criminal investigation and, in fact, lead to a nasty assortment of child abusers, sexual predators, and a blackmailer. Sounds grim, but the effect is exhilarating because the writing is so good, the plotting so clever and well thought-out. Robotham really cares about his creations. He seems to laugh and hurt right along with them. This is crime fiction of the highest order.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)