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Overview
Joe O'Loughlin is in familiar territory-standing on a bridge high above a flooded gorge, trying to stop a distraught woman from jumping. "You don't understand," she whispers, and lets go. Joe is haunted by his failure to save the woman, until her teenage daughter finds him and reveals that her mother would never have committed suicide-not like that. She was terrified of heights.
What could have driven her to commit such a desperate act? Whose voice? What evil?
Having devoted his career to repairing damaged minds, Joe must now confront an adversary who tears them apart. With pitch-perfect dialogue, believable characters, and astonishingly unpredictable plot twists, Shatter is guaranteed to keep even the most avid thriller readers riveted long into the night.
Editorials
Stephen King
The most suspenseful book I read all year.— Entertainment Weekly
People Magazine
Terrific....a classic 'wrong man' thriller that puts its hero in hot water, then raises the Fahrenheit to a fever pitch....Robotham not only builds the suspense masterfully but tops it off with a stunning twist.The New York Times Book Review
Pleasantly creepy....plotted with precision and narrated with real intelligence.Publishers Weekly
Winner of Australia's Ned Kelly Award for Best Novel, Robotham's compelling fourth thriller (after The Night Ferry) finds clinical psychologist Joe O'Loughlin and his family in Somerset, where he teaches part-time at the University of Bath. When Joe fails to persuade a suicidal woman not to leap from a bridge to her death, he becomes obsessed with understanding the woman's motives. The woman's grief-stricken teenage daughter tracks down Joe, but the police don't take notice until another woman ends up dead under suspicious circumstances. Joe calls on an old friend, retired London detective inspector Vincent Ruiz, and together they race to catch a killer who uses psychological techniques Joe recognizes from his own practice to destroy people. Robotham smoothly mixes Joe's investigation and personal struggles with glimpses into the killer's mind. Even the sharpest readers may not anticipate all of the plot's agile switchbacks or foresee the chilling climax. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Library Journal
Retired psychologist Joe O'Loughlin is coping with his Parkinson's disease by leading a quiet life with his family on the London outskirts, lecturing at a nearby university. His hopes for peace are dashed, however, when he is literally pulled from a lecture and asked to coax a suicidal woman from a bridge. The woman, naked, in high heels, and talking on a cell phone, seems transfixed by the call and ends up taking her own life. Although it's quickly labeled a suicide by the authorities (for obvious reasons), Joe doesn't agree and sets about trying to solve the mystery, which deepens when a second, similar death occurs. Initially rebuffed by the police, Joe calls in his old friend, retired policeman Vincent Ruiz, whom readers will recognize from Robotham's earlier thrillers Suspect, Lost, and The Night Ferry; Joe also figured in Suspect and Lost, and together they start a harrowing investigation. Robotham once again delivers. Recommended for all public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ4/1/08.]
—Caroline Mann