The Night Ferry

Claire Corbett's youthful voice and perky energy are a fine fit for Australian author Michael Robotham's latest thriller. Corbett shines as Sikh detective Ali Barba, who played a minor role in the author's earlier novels. Ali is recovering from a back injury when Cate, a pregnant friend from high school, calls upon her for help. Before Cate can explain, a suspicious accident kills her husband and leaves her in a coma. It's up to Ali and retired Homicide Detective Vincent Ruiz to discover what lies behind Cate's call for help. Corbett makes Ali an original--young, independent, intelligent, and wickedly wry in her social commentary. Ali and Ruiz uncover illegal surrogates, baby-smuggling, kidnapping, white slavery, and murder, and Corbett's performance makes it all work. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

April 9, 2007
At the start of the sharply plotted third thriller from Australian author Robotham (after Suspect
and Lost
), London police detective Alisha Barba, a Sikh woman who's recovering from a back injury incurred in the line of duty in Lost
("After six operations and nine months of physiotherapy I am fit again, with more steel in my spine than England's back four"), receives a brief note from a school friend, Cate, whom she hasn't heard from in eight years: "I'm in trouble. I must see you. Please come to the reunion." At the school reunion, the pregnant Cate tells Ali that someone is after her baby. As Cate and her husband, Felix, are leaving the event, a car strikes them both, killing Felix instantly and fatally injuring Cate. Insp. Det. Vincent Ruiz, Ali's crotchety colleague, accompanies her to Amsterdam in search of answers that involve drugs and frozen human embryos. In keeping with the opening sentence's invocation of Graham Greene, the author's terse, resonant prose hides more than it reveals. Readers will hope Robotham has many more books of this caliber in him.