Bleed For Me
Michael Robotham
Joseph O’Loughlin is a kindhearted psychologist with a flawed family life and a sense of dry humour. Bleed For Me is the fourth book in the series.
Ray Hegarty, a highly respected former detective, lies dead in his daughter Sienna's bedroom. She is found covered in his blood. Everything points to her guilt, but psychologist Joe O'Loughlin isn't convinced.
Fourteen year old Sienna is the best friend of Joe's daughter and he has watched her grow up and seen the troubled look in her eyes. Against the advice of the police, he launches his own investigation, embarking on a hunt that will lead him to a predatory schoolteacher, a conspiracy of silence and a race-hate trial that is captivating the nation.
Although he and his wife are living apart, his family, his two daughters Charlie and Emma, are of prime importance to Joe O'Loughlin. That's why they are separated really - his work with the police in Bristol has a way of backlashing into their lives.
There's a theme running through BLEED FOR ME which I feel must come straight out of Michael Robotham's own heart. The following extract comes from the final pages.
Parenthood is a lot like being a trapeze artist, knowing when to let go and watch your child tumble away in mid-air, reaching out for the next rung, testing herself. My job is to be here when she swings back, ready to catch her and to launch her into the world again.
After SHATTER which topped the charts for me two years ago, I wondered whether Michael Robotham could ever do as well or better. These days I rarely read a book in one sitting, but BLEED FOR ME just kept me reading.
The prime POV is Professor Joe O'Loughlin, clinical psychologist, but ex-detective Vincent Ruiz who has been present from the beginning of the series, and DCI Ronnie Cray whom we first met in SHATTER both play primary roles. By the end of BLEED FOR ME they are really working as a team.
If you've never read any Robotham before then this one will send you looking for more.
And where better to start than at the beginning:
The Suspect (2003)
Lost (2005) (aka The Drowning Man)
The Night Ferry (2007)
Shatter (2008)
Bombproof (2008)
Bleed For Me (2010)
Review by Kerrie Smith, MYSTERIES IN PARADISE
About Michael Robotham:
An Australian writer, born in Casino, NSW.
A former journalist, Robotham went to London where he worked as a reporter and sub-editor for various UK national newspapers before becoming a staff feature writer on The Mail on Sunday. He rose to become deputy features editor before resigning in May 1993. He then went on to become a ghostwriter, collaborating on fifteen "autobiographies" for people in the arts, politics, the military and sport. Twelve of these titles became Sunday Times bestsellers. In 1996 he returned to Australia with his family and continued writing full-time. In 2002, a partial manuscript of his first novel THE SUSPECT, became the subject of a bidding war at the London Book Fair. It was later translated into 22 languages and sold over a million copies around the world.