Michael Robotham – April 9 2017

World Parkinson’s Day – April 11 2017

Michael is an award-winning crime fiction writer. He began a journalism cadetship on the Sydney afternoon newspaper The Sun before going to London and working as a reporter and sub-editor for various UK national newspapers, eventually becoming a staff feature writer then deputy features editor on The Mail on Sunday. Michael went on to become a ghostwriter, collaborating on fifteen ‘autobiographies’ for people in the arts, politics, military and sport. Twelve of these titles became Sunday Times bestsellers. In 1996 Michael returned to Australia with his family and continued writing full-time. In 2002, a partial manuscript of his first novel, The Suspect, which was to become the first in the Joe O’Loughlin series, became the subject of a bidding war at the London Book Fair. It was later translated into 22 languages and sold over a million copies around the world.

Joe O’Loughlin series #6: Say You’re Sorry
Little Brown, 2012; ISBN 978316221245
Joseph O’Loughlin is a clinical psychologist with Parkinson’s disease who works alongside hard-drinking former detective Vincent Ruiz in this crime series set in London. When best friends Piper and Tash disappear one Sunday morning, the investigation captivates a nation but the teenage girls are never found. Three years later, during the worst blizzard in a century, a husband and wife are brutally killed in the farmhouse where Tash McBain once lived. To Joe, the suspect, a troubled young man exhibiting the signs of developing schizophrenia, seems anything but responsible. Convinced that Piper or Tash might still be alive, Joe and Vincent persuade the police to re-open the investigation. But they are racing against time to save the girls from someone with an evil, calculating and twisted mind ….

Life or Death
Hachette, Australia, 2014; ISBN 9780751552904
Why would a man who has served a long prison sentence escape the day before he’s due to be released? Audie was sentenced to 10 years for a robbery in which four people died, including two members of his gang. Five million dollars has never been recovered from the robbery, and everybody believes Audie knows where the money is. For 10 years Audie has been beaten, stabbed, and threatened by inmates and guards, all desperate to know the secret. The day before he is due to be released, Audie suddenly vanishes. The hunt for Audie, and the money, is on. But Audie’s not running to save his own life – instead, he’s trying to save someone else. Based on the true story of a Long Bay gaol prisoner who escaped the day before his sentence expired.