Nothing to be sorry about in this one……   ****

Reading Robotham’s novels is like playing Ping Pong. One is good, the next not so good, then good, and on and on. This is a good one!

It seems when he writes the protagonist, in this case Joe O’Loughlin, in first person and adds one other character in first person, Robotham’s writing excels. He did this in Shatter, where the other point of view character was the villain. In this novel the other first person point of view is a teenager, Piper Hadley, who was kidnapped three years ago along with her friend, Tash McBain. Robotham’s ability to get into the heads of these characters makes for an outstanding read.  In this case, he reveals the mind of a teenager in a way that is not only believable but made me forget it was the author writing.

This novel has a great deal of tension, a few scenes that made me cringe, and plenty of twists at the end that kept me guessing. Once the kidnapper is revealed, I had to stop for a minute and think about whether it made sense for that character to be the culprit.  And yes, it did.  There is even a moment when I caught myself saying out loud to the character, Piper, “Don’t do that, don’t you know who that is!?” I will let you figure out when I did that.

My only concern now is since the last book, The Wreckage, was not one of his good ones, and this one is, what will the next one be like in this game of back and forth?

In the meantime this one gets four stars. This one loses a star for a couple of plot points that I can’t point out without this review being a spoiler.