A decorated former detective lies dead in his daughter’s bedroom. A traumatised 14-year-old is found covered in her father’s blood. Everything points to Sienna Hegarty’s guilt, but psychologist Joe O’Loughlin isn’t convinced.

Sienna is his daughter’s best friend and Joe has watched her grow up and seen the troubled look in her eyes. Against the advice of police, he launches his own search for answers with the help of retired detective Vincent Ruiz, embarking upon a hunt that will lead them to a predatory schoolteacher; a conspiracy of silence and a race hate trial that is captivating the nation.

Michael Robotham

Born in Australia in November 1960, Michael Robotham grew up in small country towns that had more dogs than people and more flies than dogs. He escaped in 1979 and became a cadet journalist on an afternoon newspaper in Sydney.

For the next fourteen years he wrote for newspapers and magazines in Australia, Britain and America. As a senior feature writer for the UK’s Mail on Sunday he was among the first people to view the letters and diaries of Czar Nicholas II and his wife Empress Alexandra, unearthed in the Moscow State Archives in 1991. He also gained access to Stalin’s Hitler files, which had been missing for nearly fifty years until a cleaner stumbled upon a cardboard box that had been misplaced and misfiled.

In 1993 he quit journalism to become a ghostwriter, collaborating with politicians, pop stars, psychologists, adventurers and showbusiness personalities to write their autobiographies. Twelve of these non-fiction titles were bestsellers with combined sales of more than 2 million copies.

His first novel The Suspect, a psychological thriller, was chosen by the world’s largest consortium of book clubs as only the fifth “International Book of the Month”, making it the top recommendation to 28 million book club members in fifteen countries. It has been translated into twenty-two languages, including some he’s barely heard of.

His second novel Lost won the Ned Kelly Award for the Crime Book of the Year in 2005, given by the Australian Crime Writers Association. It was also shortlisted for the 2006 Barry Award for the ‘Best British Novel’ published in the US in 2005.

Michael’s subsequent novels The Night Ferry and Shatter were both shortlisted for UK Crime Writers Association Steel Dagger in 2007 and 2008. Shatter was also shortlisted in the inaugural ITV3 Thriller Awards in the UK and for South Africa’s Boeke Prize. In August 2008 Shatter won the Ned Kelly award for Australia’s best crime novel.

Michael can most often be found working in his ‘pit of despair’ (basement office) on Sydney’s northern beaches where he funds the extravagent lifestyles of a wife and three daughters.

— michaelrobotham.com

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