Crime Scene: MICHAEL ROBOTHAM Life or Death. Review and overview by Karen Chisholm
One of Australia’s great storytellers: Michael Robotham’s crime fiction and the tantalising premise of his new novel.
Michael Robotham’s latest novel, published ten years after his first, was more than 20 years in the making. In a recent interview, the author said:
‘It took me years to come up with an answer and even longer before I felt I had the skills to tell the story properly. I needed to practise. I needed to learn. I needed to get better. That’s why I’m so excited about Life or Death. It’s a love story and a prison story and a heart-stopping account of one man’s refusal to surrender. More importantly, it’s the book that I was meant to write.’
Robotham’s renowned for taking a snippet from real life and building his novels around the ‘what if’ questions that tweak his interest, and he does so again in Life or Death:
‘I read a newspaper account of a man who had served a long prison sentence, but escaped the day before he was due to be released. Why, I asked myself, what could possibly be the reason?’
It then took many years to come up with an answer, and the confidence to tell the story, but what a story it is. Part thriller, part jailbreak, part outlaw on the run, Life or Death is also a love story and a classic take on the man-against-the-machine scenario.
It comes as no surprise that the ‘grand master of suspense’ can craft a story like this, or that Robotham, an Australian, can set this story deep in the American countryside and make it read, feel and sound exactly as if it came from a writer from that area. He’s done the same thing with earlier novels – in the other stand-alone, Bombproof, and in the acclaimed O’Loughlin and Ruiz series.
The Suspect, the first of the O’Loughlin and Ruiz series, was released in 2004. Set in the UK, where Robotham was then working, the novel introduces an unlikely pair of protagonists – psychiatrist Joseph O’Loughlin, a complex, difficult man facing a future with Parkinson’s Disease, and Vincent Ruiz, a serving police detective, more personally relaxed, and quietly very good at his job. The basics of their friendship, working partnership and frictions are set up well in this debut. It’s not just an unusual partnership, the book also has the unusual dimension of making O’Loughlin physically as well as emotionally flawed. Robotham has at times reflected in interviews about the wisdom of choosing Parkinson’s Disease – not realising that as the series would continue for so long it would be a tricky progression to pace.
Lost (2005) continued the story of these two characters, this time with Ruiz the focus, albeit a victim in his own right, and O’Loughlin taking a more supportive role. This switching of focus remains a feature of the series, giving Robotham a chance to concentrate the reader’s attention on both characters equally, while developing their relationship and the characters around them. It’s an effective device, telegraphing the cleverness of the story building and the character development that readers are in for. (Lost won the 2005 Ned Kelly Award for Best Novel and was a finalist in the 2006 Barry Award for Best British Crime Novel.)
The Night Ferry (2007) introduced a slight twist on the formula with a new cop, Alisha Barba, added to the mix. She’s another flawed character in that she was injured in the line of duty and her Asian background is also very different from that of the rest of the cast. When she is dropped into a case after an old school friend asks for help, Barba teams up with her old boss, Vincent Ruiz. At a panel at the 2014 Melbourne Writers Festival, Robotham, Alexander McCall Smith and Adrian Hyland all talked about male authors writing central female characters, something that must have seemed comment-worthy at the time the book was published. Of considerably more interest in this book, though, was the way that both detectives were forced to confront some uncomfortable truths about the nature of justice. (The Night Ferry was a finalist in both the 2007 Steel Dagger Award in the UK and the Ned Kelly Award for Best Novel in the same year.)
In 2008 Robotham released Shatter, the fourth in the series, which cemented his reputation as the ‘grand master of suspense’. In a particularly sobering example of real events triggering an idea, the central theme of this book is the ultimate in mind-games. It features a man who is able to learn enough about a family to convince a mother that he holds her child and that the only way she can save the child is to do exactly what he asks. The escalation of threats from intimidation and humiliation, leading to a naked woman, in high heels, standing on the side of a suspension bridge, ready to jump, is, well – shattering. The central character in this book had to be O’Loughlin; the reason why a woman scared of heights would jump had to be be psychological and torturous. (Shatter very deservedly won the 2008 Ned Kelly Award for Best Novel, and was a finalist in the 2008 International Dagger Award and the 2009 Barry Award for Best British Crime Novel.)
Bombproof (2009) was a stand-alone, a pure entertainment thriller, with a great sense of humour:
Sami Macbeth is not a master criminal. He’s not even a minor one. He’s not a jewel thief. He’s not a safe-cracker. He’s not an expert in explosives. Sami plays guitar and wants to be a rock god but keeps getting side-tracked by unforeseen circumstances.
A departure for Robotham, Bombproof still had the odd hat-tip to some of his series characters.
2010 saw a return to the series, with the concentration on O’Loughlin in Bleed For Me. In some people’s minds, still, (as Robotham himself ruefully admits), this is the book in which he ‘killed the dog’. Over and above that, it is a look at a threat very close to home. It also documents the breakdown of O’Loughlin’s marriage, and his increasing physical frailty. As usual, Robotham balances the personal with the more confrontational elements of the plot and this book, in particular, gives the reader some real insight into character motivation and behaviour – O’Loughlin’s and that of 14-year-old Sienna, suspected murderer and best friend of his daughter.
Robotham’s output is prolific and in 2010 he published the fifth O’Loughlin/Ruiz book, The Wreckage, which is such a departure from the rest of the series that readers could be excused for double-checking the connection. Inspired by the then-largest bank robbery in history, of the Central Bank of Iraq, in The Wreckage millions of dollars go missing from various Iraqi banks and the book focuses on a journalist who will stop at nothing to find the money. Now ex-cop Vincent Ruiz is added to the mix, along with a US accountant, a petty thief, and a missing banker, and The Wreckage is a flat-out thriller slap bang in the middle of what until now had been a series featuring psychological exploration within police procedurals.
Say You’re Sorry (2012) took readers into the mind of a teenage girl held captive by a violent, vicious sex attacker. The contrasting viewpoints in this book were enough to set your head spinning – the brave young victim, her suffering family, O’Loughlin with his increasing fragility and his struggle to deal with his own teenage daughter, and Ruiz in the role of investigator as well as helper in matters of teenage daughters. A strong contrast appears here between O’Loughlin, frail and desperate for a better relationship with his ex-wife and children – the psychologist unable to heal his own mind – and Ruiz, physically capable, psychologically and personally more stable, comfortable in his relationship with his ex-wife and, even more, with the world around him. Again those personal battles and touches don’t take the focus from a strong plot. The book came out around the same time as a lot of ‘women in jeopardy locked in the cellar’ books – most of which smacked of opportunism. Say You’re Sorry had something else to say about the will to survive and the strength of people in extreme circumstances.
Watching You in 2013 was another novel that built on an incident from real life. Familiar as we are with the idea of stalkers and the sort of threat that they pose to the person they are obsessed with, this story twisted that concept into something different:
Marnie Logan often feels like she’s being watched. Nothing she can quite put her finger on – a whisper of breath on the back of her neck, or a shadow in the corner of her eye – and now her life is frozen.
It’s increasingly hard to tell if the lurking presence is a portent of worse to come, something to do with her missing husband, or something more internal, but Marnie is definitely struggling to cope with the legal and financial mess that her husband’s disappearance has left her with. Forced into prostitution by the gangster her husband owed money to, she is depressed, confused and grieving when she turns to her neighbour, O’Loughlin, for help. Sympathy, however, quickly turns to confusion and even mistrust as a very different side to Marnie is revealed. In some quarters she’s feared, disliked and avoided, a woman known for sending the message ‘Payback is a bitch!’ to the people she’s got even with.
This book, in particular, cements the relationship between O’Loughlin and Ruiz, creating a strong collegiate and personal sense. They work as a well-oiled team, they make allowances for each other’s strengths and weaknesses and they just make sense, as nothing about Logan’s situation does. It is a particularly sobering fictional look at a bizarre real-life situation.
Which brings us to 2014 and the new stand-alone, Life or Death. Set in rural America, it is the story of Audie Palmer who, after serving ten hard years in jail, escapes the day before he is due to be released.
Two of the uniforms are searching Audie’s cell as though there’s somewhere he could possibly be hiding – under a pillow, or behind the deodorant.
The reason his jail time was so hard is because he’s believed to be the sole survivor of an armed robbery in which seven million dollars simply disappeared. And lots of people, including fellow inmates and prison guards, want to get their hands on the money.
Prison tried to kill Audie Palmer every day. Awake. Asleep. Eating. Showering. Circling the exercise yard. Through every season, scorching in summer, freezing in winter, rarely in between, prison tried to kill Audie Palmer, but somehow he survived.
There is much to admire about this novel. The setting and the characters that inhabit it are vivid and extremely believable. Palmer is a challenge for the reader – determined, obviously intelligent, obviously with a plan and his own very clear reason for an inexplicable escape.
Not once in ten years did he ever mention the robbery or the money. He didn’t lead anyone on, or make any promises. Instead he conveyed a sense of calm and equanimity, like a man who had banished from his life all superfluous sentiment, all longing and all patience for the nonessential. He was like Yoda, Buddha and the Gladiator all rolled into one.
And yet he escapes. Along the way he forms fleeting friendships – particularly with women, who seem drawn to his commitment, his quietness, his determination, and his respect. He’s not an escapee on a crash or crash-through mission. He’s careful, cautious and clever. Not so the forces working against him. Their tactics are less considered, with a sense of all is fair in war and in stopping Palmer. Who they are and why they are doing what they are doing starts to fall into place fairly soon, helped by the pace of the story, which doesn’t let up. Tellingly, there is a point where a quick glimpse into Palmer’s motivation appears if you’re really paying attention, but there is still much that isn’t explained and isn’t obvious.
From the local sheriff to FBI Special Agent Desiree Furness (she of the very short stature), to the recently released prisoner, Moss, also in pursuit, it’s a strong cast of characters all looking at Audie Palmer’s case from enough different angles to make you think there’s no way this is all going to intersect. There are opportunities for some humour among the supporting characters – helped along by some jokes about height, many of them from Furness herself, and by gentle giant Moss: ‘Well, suh, my momma couldn’t spell Moses on my birth certificate.’ In some ways these characters are stronger, more clearly known, simply because Audie, in holding his reasons close to his chest, is elusive up until the last third of the book.
By the end of Life or Death we understand how it took 20 years to come up with the ‘why’. It took much of the book for it to become clear to this reader, and more importantly, to decide whether or not the risk was worth it.
In the years since his first novel was released, Robotham has been building a back catalogue that is strong and diverse. He has a way of taking the ‘what if’ moments that many might just let roll past and looking behind them into the ways people think, react and make sense of the world. He handles tricky characters like Palmer and O’Loughlin with sensitivity, but with honesty at the same time, and he builds those characters into strong plots. All of which makes him stand out as one of the great Australian storytellers.
Michael Robotham Life or Death Sphere 2014 PB 448pp $29.99
Karen Chisholm blogs from http://www.austcrimefiction.org, where she posts book reviews well as author biographies.
You can buy this book from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW here or you can buy it from Booktopia here.
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