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Michael Robotham

Teoksen Suspect tekijä

36 teosta 8,976 jäsentä 548 arvostelua 18 Favorited

Tietoja tekijästä

Michael Robotham was born in Australia in 1960. In 1979, he moved to Sydney and became a cadet journalist on an afternoon newspaper. He spent the next fourteen years working for newspapers in Australia, Europe, Africa and America. As a senior feature writer for the United Kingdom's Mail on Sunday, näytä lisää he was among the first people to view the letters and diaries of Czar Nicholas II and his wife Empress Alexandra discovered in the Moscow State Archives in 1991. He also gained access to Stalin's Hitler files, which had been missing for nearly fifty years. He left journalism in 1993 to become a ghostwriter, collaborating with politicians, pop stars, psychologists, adventurers and show business personalities to write their autobiographies. He also writes novels including The Suspect, The Night Ferry, Lost, and The Secrets She Keeps. He won numerous awards including the Ned Kelly Award for the Crime Novel of the Year in 2005 for The Drowning Man, the Ned Kelly Award for the Crime Novel of the Year in 2008 for Shatter, the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger award for best crime novel in 2015 for Life or Death, and the 2018 Australian Book Industry Awards, General fiction book of the year for The Secrets She Keeps. (Bowker Author Biography) näytä vähemmän

Sarjat

Tekijän teokset

Suspect (2003) 1,359 kappaletta
Shatter (2008) 905 kappaletta
Lost (2005) 830 kappaletta
Bleed for Me (2010) 619 kappaletta
The Secrets She Keeps (2017) 600 kappaletta
Good Girl, Bad Girl (2019) 579 kappaletta
The Night Ferry (2007) 557 kappaletta
Say You're Sorry (2012) 523 kappaletta
Life or Death (2014) 487 kappaletta
Watching You (2013) 363 kappaletta
The Wreckage (2011) 361 kappaletta
When She Was Good (2020) 359 kappaletta
Bombproof (2009) 329 kappaletta
The Other Wife (2018) 317 kappaletta
Close Your Eyes (2015) 288 kappaletta

Merkitty avainsanalla

Yleistieto

Syntymäaika
1960-11
Sukupuoli
male
Kansalaisuus
Australia
Asuinpaikat
Casino, New South Wales, Australia
Ammatit
crime novelist
journalist
ghost writer
biographer
Palkinnot ja kunnianosoitukset
Ned Kelly Award
Agentti
Richard Pine
Lyhyt elämäkerta
Michael Robotham is a former journalist and the ghostwriter of at least fourteen autobiographies of prominent figures in the military, arts, sport and science (of Lulu, Ricky Tomlinson, Geri Halliwell, Rolf Harris and Tracy Edwards and others). He lives in Sydney, Australia with his wife and three daughters.

Jäseniä

Kirja-arvosteluja

On the surface, Meghan has it all: a handsome, successful husband on television, two beautiful children and a third on the way. She attends prenatal yoga classes, and spends time writing a “mommy blog.”

Agatha doesn’t have it so easy. She’s divorced, seeking to keep her new man, Hayden (of the Royal Navy), in her life with an accidental pregnancy she uses as leverage with his family back home. She works in the grocery, lives in a drab home, and wants to be Meg.

The two women have spoken on occasion, and at one point become “friends,” chatting over their yet unborn children and going through baby clothes, a scene which later comes into play when the police wonder at people who might have inserted themselves into Meg’s life in the months leading up to her delivery.

Meg can’t possibly believe Agatha could have anything to do with her missing infant son.

Agatha has been convincing.

*Spoiler alert* I will try to keep to a minimum but cannot review without mentioning reasons I lowered my rating to four instead of five stars.

Overall The Secrets She Keeps is a page-turning read. I foresaw trouble between Meg and Agatha from the beginning, but that’s to be expected given the blurb. Agatha’s fake pregnancy is telegraphed, but so well-written and thorough that I really feared for Meg’s safety. There’s talk of Meg needing a cesarean birth due to prior delivery complications and I waited for Meg to be abducted and Agatha to be performing some do-it-yourself surgery, but this didn’t get that dark.

What did happen, though, reveals a heartbreaking backstory of a woman, Agatha, who feels her life is worthless without being able to have and raise children of her own. She’s suffered, and is unable or unwilling to see the pain she inflicts upon others in her quest for what she desires most.

Kudos to the author for so completely committing to this tragic character.

Meg, on the other hand, is someone with whom I’m less sympathetic. I almost agree with Agatha’s speculation that Meg isn’t grateful for what she has (then again neither is her husband). Both partners have been unfaithful, and it’s in calling into question Meg’s son’s paternity that I feel the author either went too far or not far enough.

Let me explain. Meg had a one night-stand with her husband’s best friend, a man she shares a past with (unbeknownst to her husband). When “Ben” (Meg’s infant) goes missing from the hospital, it seems a foregone conclusion that while Meg is berating her husband for his infidelity, she’ll have to admit her own. Simon (the possible father) is set up as someone demanding, a man who needs to know whether or not the boy is his, and who wants badly to be in his life if so. He seems the perfect suspect, really, but never once is any of this mentioned to the police, not even while Meg fears for her son’s life. The Simon-Meg connection seemed a lot of drama and potential tension for nothing because when it came down to it Simon was like, “Yeah, well, it’s okay. Congrats on the baby that may or may not be mine. Maybe I’ll turn in this DNA swab or maybe I’ll just try and get my girlfriend pregnant instead.”

What the what???

If something’s like this is written into a story it must have purpose other than surface tension. Simon professed love for Meg. Her husband was cheating with their realtor. How on Earth does this end up “happily ever after?”

Grr.

Also, I’m not a fan of appropriated material. In the author’s quest to write a compelling false pregnancy for Agatha he resorted to quite literally mimicking a scene from Gone Girl almost to a T. Agatha has a pregnant friend who she invites over and plies with drinks to make her pee in a broken toilet, for Agatha to then take the pee to her doctor to get a positive pregnancy test. Eh, sorry, that one’s been done before.

For that reason and for the whole thread about Simon, I’m downgrading my rating from five to four stars. Harsh, maybe, because this is certainly five-star prose, but I don’t feel the plot is perfect, and fives are rare from me. Overall, an excellent read. Riveting, and Agatha’s secrets are both shocking and heartbreaking. What drives a woman to steal another woman’s child? You’ll have to read to find out.

*Thank you to Netgalley, the author, and the publisher for providing me with an advance copy of this novel.
… (lisätietoja)
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
bfrisch | 49 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Mar 3, 2024 |
This is the fifth installment of the Joseph O'Loughlin series. Joe is a very minor character in this story. Instead the focus is on Vincent Ruiz, the ex-cop. The story alternates back and forth between two plot lines. In Iraq, journalist Luca Terracini is investigating a string of bank robberies along with UN auditor Daniela Garner. Meanwhile in London, banker Richard North has gone missing. It was a bit confusing at first for me, before I could get my bearings on how these two stories were related. But in typical Michael Robotham fashion, the writing and storytelling kept me engaged. This was a thriller.… (lisätietoja)
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
ravensfan | 29 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Dec 24, 2023 |
When she Was Good. Michael Robotham. 2021. I have read several books by this author, but this is the first one in this series. Forensic psychologist Cyrus Haven is seeing a young woman, “Evie,” who was found hidden in a wall in a deserted house along with a dead body. She refused to talk about anything related to her past or give her real name. She is terrified, and Haven knows he has to learn about her history to help her. This is a wonderfully suspenseful novel full of plot twists. I am glad Janet rediscovered Robotham and hope to read more by him. Very violent.… (lisätietoja)
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
judithrs | 17 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Oct 6, 2023 |
I would really like to rate this a 3.5/5. Interesting main character. Good plot. If you like thriller/suspense, this is for you.
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
Maryjane75 | 32 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Sep 30, 2023 |

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Associated Authors

Ineke Lenting Translator
Marijke Koch Translator
John Chancer Narrator

Tilastot

Teokset
36
Jäseniä
8,976
Suosituimmuussija
#2,679
Arvio (tähdet)
3.8
Kirja-arvosteluja
548
ISBN:t
588
Kielet
13
Kuinka monen suosikki
18

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