Good
Girl, Bad Girl, by Michael Robotham.
Word-of-mouth
publicity isn’t always reliable, given peoples’ varied tastes, but I am so
pleased I took my friend’s advice to read anything
by Michael Robotham. What a treat! The above title had all the necessary
requisites to keep me turning pages feverishly – and if I hadn’t had mundane
but necessary ‘things to do’, I would have happily read the book in one
sitting: there is no higher praise.
Forensic
psychologist Cyrus Haven is approached by a social worker acquaintance to
assess Evie Cormac, an occupant of Langford Hall, a secure children’s home in
Nottingham where Cyrus is based. Evie is
not her real name, but one given to her by the authorities after she was found
in a secret room in a house that was undergoing renovation. Also, a rotting corpse was discovered in an
adjoining room after neighbours complained of the smell. Two dogs were also found, seemingly cared for
and not starving, like Evie. No-one
knows how old she is or what her real name may be, for Evie refuses to divulge
anything about herself; it is all
guesswork.
Now, six years have
passed; she is dyslexic, surly, the bane
of those in charge, and the terror of the other inmates: you mess with Evie at your peril She is also ferociously intelligent and has
an uncanny gift: she knows when someone
is lying. Just by looking at them. And she’s due to be released into a perilous
future when the authorities decide she could be eighteen.
Meantime, the body of
fifteen-year-old Jody Sheehan, British Junior Ice-skating champion has been
found in a nearby wood, raped and murdered.
Her family is in pieces, and Cyrus and his police colleagues are
concentrating all their expertise on finding the killer: Evie’s eventual release into society is
pushed down his ‘to-do’ list until the court makes her his foster-child, as an
experiment. Could two people be more
mismatched? For Cyrus has his secrets
too, especially concerning the deaths of his family: he, more than anyone, would know all the
emotions flooding Evie like a huge tide – but he doesn’t feel adequate for the
job.
There are plenty of red
herrings that sent me happily down all sorts of dead ends in this
tightly-plotted, truly thrilling story, and the ‘whodunnit’ at the end was (for
once!) a real surprise, but what really impressed me were the characters: even the minor players were credible and
beautifully drawn, and Cyrus and Evie are so endearing that they deserve a
sequel - especially Evie, cantankerous, violent, explosive, funny and loyal. We need to read about her again. SIX STARS
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