OMG. OMG. OMG.
I just finished an AMAZING book! Now that I have that out of the way, let’s talk about Close Your Eyes by Michael Robotham (wish I knew how to pronounce his last name), which is the 8th in the Joe O’Loughlin series…but truly, if you haven’t read any in the series, you should still read this. It will all make sense, and you will love it, and you will be entertained for hours on end…and at the end, you might be going “WHAT?!?!?!?! NOOOOOOOO!” But it’s OK because Michael Robotham is going to be one of your new favorite authors.
First off, you will SEE his characters. For example, the man whose “tight curls are starting to gray, clinging to his scalp like iron filings on a magnet.” And put the characters in relationships: “…the best of marriages can become like a {Pinter play, with long pauses, or characters finishing each other’s sentences or having no dialogue at all.”
See what I mean? And although his stories are fictional, they sometimes feel like they are absolutely about today’s news and newsmakers: a media personality who “likes to pick on particular groups…immigrants, Muslims…proves that his prejudices run wide and deep, even if his listeners come from the shallowest of gene pools.” And he can describe setting vividly, as when he takes us to the “nursing home. It is the smell I can never get used to—a combination of a male urinal and an RSPCA shelter.” Or see “…the edge of the horizon, a container ship barely seems to be moving, as though pinned between the sea and the sky like a drop of moisture trapped between two panes of glass.”
OK, so we have established that he writes REALLY well and that I love his writing. And I mentioned this is a series…which, if you haven’t read any (and you SHOULD HAVE, but might not have, since he is Australian and for some reason possible related to that geographical quirk, hasn’t become wildly popular in the US). The protagonist, Joe, is a forensic psychologist who has Parkinson’s. Which is just a tangential fragment of what makes him who he is and what he does, especially in relationship to his estranged wife and daughters. In this story, Joe is brought in to advise on a murder…that becomes a series of attacks/murders. And he uses his skills to ferret out the personality of the evil person or persons (don’t want to give anything away – I am not a spoiler alert! Kind of person, I prefer to just tell you that you should trust me, if you like mysteries, or psychological themes, or thrillers, or best of all a mystery that is a psychological thriller, you HAVE TO read this. Then go get Robotham’s other books. He is that good. If you need more encouragement, if you enjoyed Gone Girl, Girl on a Train, I Let You Go, or The Lies We Tell, you will like this…but even more, because it is SO well done.
Many thanks to NetGalley for an advance copy of this title in exchange for my honest review.