Say You're Sorry

August 13, 2012
In Ned Kelly Award–winner Robotham’s taut seventh psychological thriller featuring psychologist Joe O’Loughlin and retired cop Vincent Ruiz (after 2011’s The Wreckage), the Oxford police approach Joe for help in profiling a suspect, Augie Shaw. Accused of murdering Patricia and William Heyman in the couple’s farmhouse during a blizzard, Shaw strikes Joe as an unlikely killer since he suffers from delusions and possibly schizophrenia. Interwoven with Joe’s investigation are journal entries by 18-year-old Piper Hadley, who was kidnapped—along with her best friend, Tash McBain—three years earlier and is still being held. Known as “the Bingham Girls,” Piper and Tash dominated the news but when no clues turned up, it was assumed they ran away. When links arise between the Heyman murders and the unsolved kidnapping, Joe and Vincent work to reopen the girls’ case and find them before it’s too late. Robotham doesn’t shy away from the unsettling, but he never seeks merely to titillate. Agent, Richard Pine, Inkwell Management.

Starred review from September 1, 2012
Australia-based writer Robotham's insightful psychologist Joe O'Loughlin once again tackles a tough case involving crimes that, at first blush, do not seem related. Two young girls from a small English village disappear one night after attending a local funfair. Gorgeous, promiscuous Tash and quiet, athletic Piper had little in common, but became fast friends. Tash was brilliant, but underachieving. Her lower-middle-class family was troubled, and she attended a prestigious private school on scholarship, while Piper's mismatched former-model mother and wealthy banker father lived in the area's toniest neighborhood. While their disappearance initially sparked teams of searchers and outrage from the local citizenry, it simmered down once the police become convinced the girls were runaways. Three years later, the girls are still missing. In the meantime, O'Loughlin and his teenage daughter are trying to rebuild their fractured relationship, damaged by his estrangement from his wife. While attending a conference, police seek out the savvy profiler and ask for his help in solving a terrible double murder. As investigators wade through the blood bath of a crime scene, they learn that the home is connected to the girls' disappearances. In fact, while the couple killed was no relation to Tash, the home in which it occurred was where she'd lived before she vanished. While police puzzle through the homicide, another body is found, but this time it's an unidentified young woman found frozen in the ice of a nearby pond. O'Loughlin wants no part of either case but is soon sucked into helping police while racing against the clock to prevent another tragedy. Robotham's writing ranges from insightful to superb and he has no qualms about burdening his hero, O'Loughlin, with not only a broken personal life, but also a broken body courtesy of a case of Parkinson's, making him not only more human, but more likable. Subtle, smart, compelling and blessed with both an intelligent storyline and top-notch writing, this book will grab readers from page one and not let go until the final sentence.

COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 1, 2012
Three years after British teenagers Piper Hadley and Tash McBain disappear, the case remains unsolved. Then, in the midst of a blinding blizzard, a man and woman are brutally murdered in the farmhouse where Tash once lived. The local police bring Augie Shaw, a mentally disabled man, into custody, but clinical psychologist Joe O'Loughlin is certain he didn't do it. O'Loughlin has been working with police on the two cases, though at the beginning, they gave him little credence or respect. (When they called him Professor, you could practically hear their collective sneer.) O'Loughlin doubts Shaw has the intellectual capacity to mastermind an abduction, much less a homicide. But what evil soul did? When Tash's body is found at the bottom of a nearby frozen lake, hope dwindles but doesn't disappear. If Tash escaped the clutches of her abductor at least temporarily, perhaps her friend Piper is still alive. Australian investigative journalist and novelist Robotham (Bleed for Me, 2012) creates relentless suspense as law enforcement and O'Loughlin close in on a sinister soul with a deranged criminal mind.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)