Watching You-Michael Robotham

Watching You Michael Robotham Mulholland Books/Little Brown, Mar 11 2014, $26.00 ISBN: 9780316252003 In London over a year ago, Daniel vanished leaving behind his grieving financially strapped wife Marnie and their two children. Depressed and forced to work as an escort to put food on the table, Marnie turns to her neighbor psychologist Dr. Joe O’Loughlin as a patient of his; particularly since she insists she is not paranoid while claiming someone follows her. Marnie finds an incomplete scrapbook and accompanying DVD that Daniel worked on as a birthday present for his wife. The DVD contains interviews he conducted and images he took of people who knew Marnie. Almost all of those he spoke with feared her as a terrible monster and many of them wish she would drop dead. Marnie is stunned by the revelatory reactions. She asks Joe what is going on; in turn he persuades his friend former cop Vincent Ruiz to investigate especially when a person she recently contacted and met is murdered with Marnie being the last known individual seen with the victim. The latest O’Loughlin-Ruiz case (see Say You’re Sorry) is a great psychological investigative thriller; as the protagonists wonder whether their client is a dangerous psychopath or a victim of an insidious adversary with both heavily leaning towards her being a lethal lunatic. Although the premise seems improbable, Michael Robotham convinces his audience that it is genuinely happening. Harriet Klausner