Robotham, Michael: Suspect

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The suspect of Michael Robotham's title is Joe O'Loughlin, a perceptive and well-meaning psychologist who, at the age of forty-two, has recently been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. The news sends him into a spiral of self pity until a more immediate and terrible threat arises. Joe finds himself cast as the prime suspect in the unusually vicious murder of a young woman with whom he happens to have had an unpleasant history. Joe assumes at first, as we all probably would, that his innocence will eventually become evident to the dogged detective who has taken a dislike to him. But as the evidence against O'Loughlin adds up, the possibility of a lifetime of incarceration becomes terrifyingly real. With the police unwilling to credit his claim that a volatile patient of his is somehow behind the crime, Joe is forced to try to unravel the real killer's elaborate plot against him while on the run.

Robotham tells the story of Joe's descent into a nightmarish conspiracy in spare, highly readable prose that advances the plot quickly. Joe's back story is fleshed out in brief reminiscences that never interrupt the flow of the narrative. The only disappointment in the book comes in the pivotal scenes of its penultimate chapter, when the dramatic action is too rushed and as a result difficult to follow. That aside, Robotham's Suspect is a gripping, well-written thriller that readers will be loath to put down.