Lying Beside You
The book is third in a series, but can easily be read and enjoyed as a standalone. The author is known for his rounded character portrayals and suspenseful plots, and this one definitely meets that standard.
The two main characters are forensic psychologist Cyrus Haven and his tenant and former patient, Evie Cormac, who has a special talent: she can tell when people are lying.
Cyrus works closely with the Nottingham police as a criminal profiler. He’s called to assist in a murder/missing persons case: a disabled man has been beaten to death in his home, and his daughter Maya, who has been his main caregiver, is missing. She went on a date the night before, with a man she met on a dating app. She didn’t return home and hasn’t been seen since.
Besides helping the police on the case, Cyrus decides to help a young man who’s been recently released from prison, who says he was innocent of the sexual assault charge he was convicted of. Cyrus gives him a job fixing things around the house, and lets him move in.
Cyrus’ study of abnormal psychology is deeply rooted in his personal history. When he was thirteen, his older brother Elias killed their parents and twin sisters. Cyrus only escaped because he wasn’t home at the time. He was then raised by his grandparents, who later left him the large house where he now lives. Elias, meanwhile, has been in a psychiatric hospital ever since the killing. [This isn’t a spoiler; it’s revealed in the early pages of the book.]
Evie has an even more damaged past. Cyrus first met her when she was in a youth detention centre, following years of abuse and foster home care. Now twenty-one, she’s been a tenant in Cyrus’s house for the past year. To please him, she’s been attending school and has found a part-time job in a local bar, but neither appeals to her much. She unexpectedly becomes involved in the search for Maya as well.
As the story begins, Cyrus’ brother Elias is about to be released from the psychiatric hospital where he’s spent the last twenty years. He’s supposedly recovered from his psychosis, and it’s proposed that he come to stay with Cyrus. Neither Cyrus nor Evie are sure they’re ready to share a house with Elias, even if he’s now considered safe to live in the community.
The story gets even more complicated when a second victim disappears, and new plot twists keep raising the tension level. Robotham handles the intertwining of character and plot superbly,, and after a roller coaster of a ride, brings the book to a satisfying resolution. He says he is working on a fourth book in the series, continuing to follow Cyrus and Evie’s lives, but it won’t likely appear until after 2024.
Michael Robotham was born in Australia in 1960. The son of a schoolteacher, he led what he describes as an idyllic small-town childhood. After finishing school at seventeen, he was accepted as a trainee journalist at The Sun, an afternoon newspaper in Sydney. He worked his way up as a journalist in Sydney, and in 1986 moved to London UK to pursue wider opportunities. There he worked for several national newspapers, building a reputation as an investigative journalist; in 1989 he became a feature writer for the Mail on Sunday.
In 1993 he left to become a freelance writer; later that year he accepted a first contract as a ghostwriter. He proceeded to ghostwrite 15 popular autobiographies, including those of former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell, actor Ricky Tomlinson, and singer Lulu. These proved very successful; twelve of those titles became bestsellers, with combined sales of more than two million copies.
In 1996 he returned to Australia with his family, and continued writing full time. In 2001, in a lull between ghostwriting jobs, he wrote 117 pages of a novel, a psychological thriller. His agent loved it, and even though he hadn’t yet finished writing it, the book became the object of a bidding war at the London Book Fair in 2002. It was ultimately published in 2004 as The Suspect, selling more than a million copies worldwide. It became the first in a nine-book series featuring psychologist Joe O’Loughlin.
Michael has now published seventeen thrillers—two series and five standalones—which have been translated into 23 languages. They have won or been shortlisted for numerous international awards, including the UK Gold Dagger,, the Edgar, and the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger.
Michael lives in Sydney, Australia. He and his wife have three now-grown daughters.
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