Spooks, Neil Cross, and the Psychological Thriller

In trawling through publisher's websites for my new bookshop, I came across this video interview of author,  Neil Cross.  You may have read some of his novels, such as Burial released in 2009 or his latest tale of suspense, Captured released in May this year, but if not, then you may have come across his writing without knowing it.  If you are a fan of the BBC TV series Spooks, then you are familiar with Neil Cross's type of story, as he is the lead writer on the series and talks about this in the video.




I've read a couple of his books, and I have to say they are not for the faint hearted - in fact Burial had my heart racing when I woke up in the middle of the night having read a chapter before turning off my light the night before.  It was clever, and for some reason, I just had to read to the end even though I didn't really want to.  If you are a fan of the psychological thriller, then Neil Cross might be an author to try, but don't say I didn't warn you!

Pyschological Thriller : Michael Robotham's "Shatter"

"A naked woman in red high-heeled shoes is poised on the edge of Clifton Suspension Bridge with her back pressed to the safety fence, weeping into a mobile phone. Clinical psychologist Joseph O’Loughlin is only feet away, desperately trying to talk her down. She whispers, “You don’t understand” – and jumps”

Well, that got my attention when I picked this book up at my local library. I had seen Michael Robotham’s new book Bleed for Me on the book shelves at a bookshop, but there are so many authors in this genre, I usually like to “try before I buy”. This is a psychological thriller so don’t read it if you want everything warm and fuzzy – No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency it is not. Personally, I like a bit of suspense and the battle of good against evil and you get it in buckets here.

Firstly, there is Joe, diagnosed with the early stages of Parkinson’s disease, he has had to reduce his hours working as a psychologist and take on some of the responsibilities of organising the home and his two daughters. There is a lot for the reader to identify with in Joe’s home life. Joe loves his wife and family, but he is struggling with his new role of house husband, including hiring a nanny that his wife approves of, and finds it hard to accept his wife’s devotion to corporate life which involves many overnight trips to London and overseas in her job as a translator.  We also get to glimpse the frustration he feels at the increasing physical limitations imposed by his disease. Underneath he is still the same intelligent man with perceptive insights into the working of the human mind and while he can’t trust his body anymore, he can still trust his mind

There are so many things wrong about the suicide that he was unable to stop that he starts to doubt that it is really a suicide - who was it that the women was talking to on the phone and what were they saying?. His doubts are compounded when the woman’s teenage daughter comes to see him maintaining that her mother would never commit suicide as she was scared of heights. But no one will listen. Well, not until there is a second death in similar circumstances.

As the story unfolds we meet the novel’s villian, Gideon, who is as skilled at understanding people’s minds as Joe but in a much more sinister way. Gideon can commit murder with no more than a mobile phone and manipulative suggestions, which should seem a bit far fetched but isn’t as we are bombarded these days with stories in the news of terrorists, cults, and suicide bombers.  I wasn't sure whether the existence of Gideon came too soon in the story, but I decided that it actually led to the suspense to hear Gideon's thoughts at the same time that Joe was trying to work out who was manipulating these women.

While it was easy to follow where the storyline of Shatter was heading, Michael took the reader along very cleverly, building up the suspense and apprehension as to what Gideon would do next, and leading the reader, like Joe, to the final scenes knowing what is going to happen but being unable to stop it. I found Shatter an absorbing read and certainly worth a look if you like the crime genre and don’t mind that slightly squirming feeling in the stomach. Although, if you are like me and dream about what you have been reading before you go to bed, you might want to save this one for when you can read it in daylight.

Shatter is set in England and, thus, I assumed that Michael Robotham was an English writer. It was only when I was in a bookshop in Sydney that I discovered that Michael is actually Australian, but lived in England for ten years, working as a journalist, and then as ghost writer penning the autobiographies of celebrities. “Shatter” won the 2008 Ned Kelly Award for best crime book, and was shortlisted for a number of other crime genre awards around the world, including the UK’s Steel Dagger Award. If you like to read novels in order, the character of Joe O’Loughlin first appears in The Suspect.