This is the first piece of crime fiction I’ve read in a while and I really enjoyed it. The novel zips between London, Liverpool and North Wales as Joe frantically tries to unearth Bobby’s Liverpudlian childhood and the motives behind his fatal actions before the train of police on his tail catch up with him and pin him down for murder. As Joe’s suspicions increase and he appears to be edging closer to the truth, the evidence linking himself to the murder multiplies like frog spawn and before he knows it he is being wanted for murder. Is it just a coincidence that the girl received 21 stab wounds and Bobby carries around a piece of paper with the number 21 scrawled all over it? Hmm. Often referred to in terms of his large build, when Bobby turns up at his meetings, which is infrequently at best, he begins unveiling hints and details that strangely relate to the murder case. Meanwhile, Joe is also entangled with a rather enigmatic and curious patient known as Bobby. Oh bugger! After holding back this information from Ruiz, the Detective Inspector becomes increasingly infuriated (he’s quite an angry fella) and suspicious of our protagonist and when more and more details emerge linking Joe to the murdered woman, Inspector Ruiz is more than happy to pin him down as the suspected murderer. In another highly coincidental twist of fate, Joe finds that he not only recognises the deceased, but he actually has quite a tangled and difficult past involving the lady.
Here he just happens to meet Detective Inspector Victor Ruiz who, after some intelligent ripostes from Joe, invites him to take a look into his current murder investigation of a young lady found buried near a canal with multiple, putatively self-inflicted, stab wounds.
Joe is working in London and at the novel’s opening we find him counselling a group of prostitutes set up by his old friend Elisa, also a prostitute. The first in a series for Robotham, The Suspect was published back in 2004 and takes as its focal point clinical psychologist Joe O’Loughlin.
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