Bleed for Me (original 2010; edition 2010)

This is the first book I have read by this author. He is good, very good. Characters, especially Joe are so well drawn. Setting and finally a plot with enough twists and turns to keep you reading. Not sure I'll do the priors since the reviews lead me to think they worked up to this book. ( )

A quick read, this book, it never lets go, so to speak.

Not that it is super exciting, but still. To be quite honest, I found the book a bit predictable. Not everything was according to the detective book, but very much in my opinion.
There was nothing surprising in, let me just put it that way. The psychologist who stands up for his daughter's best friend, against all better judgement, his quest for the truth in the story makes illogical jumps occasionally (as if he has received information that the reader does not get, despite the ego-perspective in the story lies on him).
The end is somewhat muddled. This is the one who did it, but no, he's not. Ah well, maybe a little, but the other is the main bad guy. A bit far fetched, feels like if there is something added at the end of the story, because the the number of pages had to be filled or so. For me that last part didn't add much. ( )

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Monday, February 27, 2012Bleed for Me by Michael Robotham
Bleed for Me features Joe O’Loughlin, a clinical psychologist suffering from the early stages of Parkinson’s disease, and he sounds an awful lot like other psychologist or detective protagonists: he has marital troubles because he’s too involved in his work. What makes this particular book stand out is that he’s not just interested in profiling criminals: we see him analyzing a number of characters throughout the course of this book, notably a set of parents mourning the disappearance of their grown daughter. Also, O’Loughlin’s story stands out in terms of the insight into parenting teenage and younger daughters.


The mystery revolves around the murder of Joe Hegarty, a retired detective. His teenage daughter Sienna is accused of murdering him, and Joe O’Loughlin is assigned to do her psychological evaluation. This plot point is a bit far-fetched because Sienna is his older daughter’s best friend: it seems like a conflict of interest for him to assess a friend of the family. The other threads of the story involve a school teacher who’s too close to his female students and a racially motivated firebombing trial.


The pacing of the book, after a slow start, is good: I was very involved with the twists of the story and read the last half of the book in a very short time. Once I step back and look at the story, though, I have a couple issues: the sheer amount of tragedy that has befallen Joe’s family and the Hegarty family is a bit excessive. O’Loughlin has a terminal illness and his older daughter was kidnapped two years before this book takes place. Sienna’s father was murdered, her older sister was brutally attacked and is now paralyzed, and Sienna is accused of murder. Finally, it’s unsettling that so much of the story centers on the violent response of men to the real or alleged rape or molestation of their female relatives. It’s a gripping read, but the subject matter is extreme.


I did enjoy reading the book because it’s refreshing to read a psychological thriller that’s not centered on profiling a serial killer. Also, I liked the fact that Robotham spends time on O’Loughlin’s private life and how he’s coping with his Parkinson’s: I can think of many crime novels that don’t spend much time with the protagonist’s loved ones. I look forward to catching up on the earlier books in the series.



Bleed for Me by Michael Robotham
Mulholland Books
U.S. Publication date: February 27, 2012 (Originally published 2010)
Source: Publisher via NetGalley ( )

Former policeman Ray Hegarty is dead and his 14-year old daughter Sienna is accused of his murder. Joe O’Loughlin is a psychologist who has previously worked with police and because Sienna is his daughter’s best friend he is drawn into this case too. While Joe believes Sienna is innocent and tenaciously investigates other people in and around the Hegarty family to see who else might have had a motive for murder, the Police generally accept that their former colleague was killed by his daughter. At the same three men are being tried for a hideous race hate crime and it seems as if the two cases might ultimately converge.

In the several earlier books in this series I have adored Joe O'Loughlin, imperfections and all. In my review of Shatter I wrote of Joe

"Each time I meet him I find something else to love. Unlike many of the protagonists in crime fiction Joe is not a troubled loner nor does he have any super human abilities. Even his skills in reading people, which he is mostly very good at, let him down some times. He’s smart, funny and heart-wrenchingly self aware. I particularly like the way Joe deals with the personal issues in his life in a very realistic way. He’s not always sensible (who is?) but nor does he go to the extremes that you see in some fiction that make you wonder how the person could possibly have survived adolescence".

It seemed to me that almost none of that applied to Joe in this book. He has now been separated from his wife for two years and is enduring the increasingly difficult manifestations of his Parkinson's disease which has, kind of, turned him into something of the troubled loner after all. At times I found him bordering on creepy, such as when he sat outside his family's home watching their shadows behind the curtains. Ick! There is a not so fine line between love and stalking. At one point he resorts to extreme violence against another man and although he was provoked it was all very banal and meant that Joe didn’t bear much resemblance to the intriguing, thought-provoking character that he had been in the past and reading about his exploits this time around was a bit like being disappointed when a family member goes off the rails.

The rest of the characters were fairly standard fare, though Joe's nearly ex-wife Julianne was more sensitively depicted than had been the case in past novels and we did get to see from her perspective how difficult Joe must be to live with. Of the new characters to this book I didn't find any of them terribly compelling I'm afraid. There just didn't seem to be anything new said here about a bloke who was teased as a kid becoming a paedophile and I think I have reached my quota of unstable divorcées becoming clingy when a new chap looks at them sideways. The bright spot for me was a very brief appearance by an older couple whose daughter had been missing, presumed dead, for several years. For me this was a glimpse into the kind of thoughtful characterisations that I've enjoyed from Robotham in the past.

As was the case for me with [b:Shatter|4523836|Shatter|Michael Robotham|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FHhp51MLL._SL75_.jpg|2321031] and [b:The Night Ferry|477361|The Night Ferry|Michael Robotham|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175094805s/477361.jpg|2321022] I struggled to stay interested in the story too. It dragged a bit, especially in the first half (and I am generally far more forgiving of stories in audio format). We spent too much time inside Joe's head as he reviewed and picked over almost every conversation he'd had and there was a lot of recounting of events which were quite predictable the first time round and did not improve on repetition. There also seemed to be a few too many plot elements that were not explored in any depth and therefore added nothing to the whole. The inclusion of a really brutal description of an animal's death for example served no purpose other than to add gore and cruelty.

Although there was just enough to keep me listening, thanks in part to Sean Barrett's sensitive narration, ultimately neither the story nor its characters ever succeeded in really hooking me in. It felt to me a little too much like the author was checking off a list of elements that the modern psychological thriller ought to have without giving much meaning to any of them. Overall I found it too formulaic and shallow to truly engage me. ( )

Sienna and Charlie, Joe O'Loughlin's daughter, are best friends. An ordinary night turns out to be anything but ordinary when Sienna shows up at Charlie's house covered in blood but takes off running, scared before anyone can speak to her. When she is found she is traumatized, won't even speak and then it is confirmed that she's wearing her father's blood. One thing leads to another and she is charged with her dad's murder. Joe wants to help Sienna. What he's put through in his attempts to prove her innocence is maddening.

I've already said, "I don't know who I love more Joe O'Loughlin or Michael Robotham for creating him" but I can not overlook Ruiz in this equation - I love when Ruiz and Joe work together.

This was not a predictable outcome and I highly recommend Michael Robotham to anyone who will listen to me! ( )