THE SUSPECT Joseph O'Loughlin appears to have the perfect life — a beautiful wife, a loving daughter and a successful career as a clinical psychologist. But nothing can be taken for granted. Even the most flawless existence is only a loose thread away from unravelling. All it takes is a murdered girl, a troubled young patient and the biggest lie of his life. THE DROWNING MAN A lost child. A shattered past. A life going under... Vincent Ruiz is lucky to be alive. A bullet in the leg, another through the hand, he is discovered clinging to a buoy in the River Thames, losing blood and consciousness fast. It takes six days for him to come out of his coma, and when he does, his nightmare is only just beginning. Because Vincent has no recollection of what happened, and nobody believes him.

Alisha Barba’s dreams of being a detective were shattered when a murder suspect broke her back across a brick wall. Now on her feet again, with her police career in limbo, she receives a message from an old school friend, Cate Beaumont, who is eight months pregnant and in trouble. On the night they arrange to meet, Cate is mown down by a car that kills her husband instantly. As paramedics fight to save her life they discover there is no baby. Her pregnancy is an elaborate lie, a cruel deception. Why? What happened? As Alisha sets out to answer these questions she is drawn deeper and deeper into a dangerous quest that will take her from the East End of London to Amsterdam’s red light district and into a murky underworld of sex trafficking, slavery and exploitation. A gripping thriller, with twists at every turn, The Night Ferry is Michael Robotham’s finest novel yet.

«Vincent Ruiz (a supporting character in Robotham's debut, Suspect) is hauled out of the Thames with a bullet wound in his leg and no memory of a shooting, let alone how he wound up in the water in Robotham's fine, moody second thriller. Keebal, a nasty cop from internal affairs, hounds Ruiz from the start, and everyone seems to know something Ruiz doesn't. When psychologist Joe O'Loughlin (the protagonist of Suspect) shows Ruiz a picture of young Mickey Carlyle—a seven-year-old girl kidnapped three years earlier whom everyone but Ruiz thinks is dead—he figures there must be some connection between her case and his shooting. Despite his injuries, Ruiz retraces this investigation with the help of his partner, a young Sikh woman named Ali. The past returns in dribs and drabs and none too gently. Mickey is the daughter of a Russian-born crime lord, Aleksei Kuznet; a cache of diamonds and a man known as a «grooming paedophile» also figure prominently in the splintered plot. The warm relationship between Ruiz and Joe, who suffers from Parkinson's, counterpoints the main story line's grit. Robotham works some good wrinkles into Ruiz's relationship with Ali and an empathetic nurse, too. The result is a thoughtful and subtle thriller, with convincing, three-dimensional characters.»

Joseph O’Loughlin appears to have the perfect life — a beautiful wife, a loving daughter and a successful career as a clinical psychologist. But nothing can be taken for granted. Even the most flawless existence is only a loose thread away from unravelling. All it takes is a murdered girl, a troubled young patient and the biggest lie of his life. Caught in a complex web of deceit and haunted by images of the slain girl, he embarks upon a search that will take him from London to Liverpool and into the darkest recesses of the human mind. Ultimately, he will risk everything to unmask the killer and save his family.