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This was an accidental but fortunate book find. I was looking in the library catalog for Good Me, Bad Me (2016, Ali Land) and checked out this instead. It was a good mistake to make because it reminded me how very good Robotham is at telling a suspense story. This is part one of a four part Cyrus Haven series. The second book, When She Was Good is reviewed here.
Our protagonist, Cyrus Haven, is involved in two story lines. One involves a murder case and the other a teenager confined to an institution.
Cyrus is a forensic psychologist working with with the Nottingham (UK) police service. He gets a call from a case worker he knows at Langford Hall, a secure facility for troubled youths. One of the residents is Evie Cormac who is petitioning to be released to live on her own. The case worker believes that neither Evie nor the world are ready for her release. He wants Cyrus to evaluate her. One reason he asks Cyrus is that he thinks that Evie might be a "truth wizard", someone who knows immediately if someone is lying or telling the truth. Cyrus studied the possibility that "truth wizards" might exist for his PhD but remains skeptical that these people actually exist. but the case worker reminds him that he wrote that someone
who wan't disrupted by emotions or lack of familiarity with the subject; someone who functioned at a higher level
could develop greater skills at identifying liars.
Making Evie's case more interesting is that she is actually a complete unknown. Her name and age were given her by the Home Office six years previously after she was found hiding in a house which was the scene of a brutal torture/murder. Evie was filthy, starving, and completely uncommunicative. She becme known to the public as Angel Face but she never revealed her real name, age, parents, where she was from, what had happened to her. All attempts to trace her had come up blank. She compensates for her PTSD by being completely incorrigible, lying as a matter of course, and enjoying being a disruptor. Pretty much she scares everyone, fellow patients and staff alike. She is also bright and has dry, sarcastic wit.
Cyrus is drawn to her, her story, and her psychology. Is she a sociopath or psychopath or a young women no one has been able to understand. Cyrus was also damaged by childhood trauma. His parents and two sisters were murdered by his brother. He becomes fixated on finding the truth about Angel Face/Evie.It's safe to say that Cyrus wouldn't have been drawn to Evie without her traumatic backstory.
Cyrus is brought into another case by Chief Inspector Lenore (Lenny Parvel who as a young constable was the first on scene when Cyrus' family was murdered and found the shocked boy. A fifteen year old girl, Jodie Sheehan, has been found sexually molested and murdered. Jodie was a popular , pretty, and a driven ics skater. But when Lenny and Cyrus start looking deeper, a dark side of Jodie emerges and she isn't the wholesome girl next door everyone thought she was.
Cyrus has some interesting comments when asked how to address Jodie's death at school. I hadn't thought of it this way before but Cyrus cautions against bringing in bereavement counselors because they can reinforce the idea that people should be traumatized.
I didn't know this was going to be a series and I hoped for a sequel to find out more about Evie. it was pretty obvious that Evie's story was the most important thing to Cyrus and the second book in the series proves that. Good Girl, Bad Girl is mostly a book of psychological suspense with Cyrus attempting to break through to Evie and the constant presence of his own childhood trauma. Cyrus' observations as a psychologist made for a large part of my enjoyment of this book.
Keywords: crime fiction, psychological suspense, childhood trauma
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