MICHAEL ROBOTHAM is a bestselling author who has won the prestigious Gold Dagger Award twice. This year marks 20 years since the publication of The Suspect, the first book in his popular ‘Joe O’Loughlin’ series.
His latest book, Storm Child, is the fourth book in his ‘Cyrus Haven’ series.
AKINA HANSEN writes.
In February 2002, author Michael Robotham received a life-changing phone call; in the early hours of the morning his UK agent informed him that his partially completed manuscript – of which he’d only written 117 pages – was in an international bidding war.
‘In the space of three hours, every dream I’ve ever had of being a full-time writer came true,’ Michael shares.
This manuscript would become The Suspect, the first in Michael’s bestselling ‘Joe O’Loughlin’ series that introduced readers to clinical psychologist Joe O’Loughlin. He’s since written a total of nine books in the series.
‘It feels as though it was yesterday that The Suspect was sold. And it’s only when you put one book on top of the other and you look at them, and you get to 18 books, that you realise how many words and how many years that entails.’
Prior to the success of his debut thriller, Michael worked as an investigative journalist and then eventually turned his hand to ghostwriting. He penned 15 autobiographies of various high-profile personalities – 12 of which became bestsellers.
Ironically, this made the success of his debut all the more surreal. Michael recalls that he was in Amsterdam when he saw The Suspect displayed in a bookshop for the first time. While it was the Dutch edition, he could see his name clearly printed on the front cover.
‘My first reaction was that they made a dreadful mistake. My name is not supposed to be on a book because I’d ghostwritten 15 autobiographies for people by then and my name was never on those books. I was always the secret, invisible hand, deep in the background, and suddenly I was thrust into the spotlight, which felt sort of wrong.’
When he returned to London that weekend, he was in for an even bigger shock.
‘I walked on to a tube station platform, and there was an enormous poster on the opposite side. And it was a silhouetted man standing next to a canal and the headline read “He’s sold nearly two million books, and 12 Sunday Times bestsellers and you don’t know his name. Meet the man behind the ghost.”’
Now – 20 years later – Michael has penned 18 novels and has been the recipient of numerous accolades, including winning the prestigious Gold Dagger Award twice. He won the award for a second time for his novel Good Girl, Bad Girl, which marked the first novel in his series featuring forensic psychologist Cyrus Haven and Evie Cormac, an abused and traumatised girl with an unusual ability to detect lies.
Michael has since written three more books in this series, which include When She Was Good, Lying Beside You, and now Storm Child.
In the first novel, readers are introduced to Evie who as a child was abused and found hiding in a secret room in a house where a man had been murdered. As a result, she represses the painful memories of her captivity, and her past remains a mystery. Cyrus Haven is initially brought on to evaluate Evie’s psychological condition at a secure children’s unit but ultimately ends up fostering her upon her release.
In Michael’s latest instalment, Storm Child, Evie is in her early 20s and while she is still living with Cyrus, she’s become much more independent.
When Cyrus and Evie decide to take a trip to a Lincolnshire beach, a horrific scene unfolds before their eyes. The bodies of 17 migrants wash ashore. Only one teenage boy, Arben, survives.
With the recent controversial Rwanda deportation bill being passed in the UK and Australia’s own human rights abuses for indefinite detention coming under international scrutiny – this story is incredibly timely and is an important reminder about the real stories behind the humans that are seeking asylum.
Like many of Michael’s previous novels, this story is seeded from a real event.
‘Several years ago, there was a migrant ship that sank in the Mediterranean and the survivors reported that the migrant boat had been deliberately rammed and sunk. And in the end, there were certain right wing anti-immigration groups that wanted to stop the small boats coming. And so, I thought I wanted to tackle that issue, it’s a big hot button issue about asylum seeking and small boats and trying to get both sides of the argument.’
Indeed, similar to the story in Storm Child, Arben, the sole survivor, tells police that their boat was deliberately rammed and sunk. In turn, Cyrus, who regularly works as a criminal consultant, is brought on to the case to help with the investigation.
According to Michael, his character Cyrus is shaped from his time working as a ghostwriter. Specifically, he wrote two books with psychologist Paul Britton who famously pioneered offender profiling in the UK. Britton consulted on high-profile cases such as the ‘House of Horrors’ case and the murder of James Bulger.
‘A lot of the books I’ve done in the past were seeded in cases that Paul covered that we could never write about … And occasionally, I still have to seek advice from people like Paul if I have a question, but most of it I still base upon all the work I did 20 years ago.’
Cyrus is an astute psychologist who believes that uncovering Evie’s past will help her heal. So when Evie recognises a Scottish man who is possibly involved in a human trafficking operation – Cyrus and Evie head to his hometown to uncover the connection. This is where Evie’s lie detector skills come in handy.
Interestingly, people like Evie really do exist.
A psychoanalyst called Dr Oliver Sacks wrote about this phenomenon in his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, which describes case histories of patients with brain injuries. When Michael read one of the case studies involving patients with aphasia who could detect lies, his curiosity was peaked.
‘Then I began studying the work of Dr Paul Ekman, who is the world’s sort of leading expert online and he’s the person that coined the term “truth wizard” … Ekman’s most famous patient was a guy called T J Newman, who was a former police officer, and he had a 90 per cent ability to tell when someone was either verbally lying, emotionally lying, or physically lying, which was just astonishing.’
For Evie, her ability to lie developed out of trauma and necessity. And when Cyrus and Evie arrive in Scotland her skills ultimately help uncover a shocking criminal network and a revelation about her family.
‘I think Evie is cursed with this ability, but it makes it fascinating.
‘What must it be like to go through life and to be able to always tell three little words as powerful as “I love you”, or “I miss you”, how damaging they can be if they’re lies.
‘I mean, there’s a reason why we’re not good lie detectors. Because if humans were good lie detectors, we wouldn’t have any friends at all. Or relationships.’
Storm Child is a thrilling psychological novel. And while fans of this series will undoubtedly be pleased to uncover more of Evie’s past, this novel can also be enjoyed as a standalone.
As to whether there will be another book in the series, Michael shares, ‘I don’t quite know if there’s more Evie and Cyrus books. I’m not working on one now and I’m writing something different. Only because the issue always was when you create a character who can tell when someone’s lying, if you put them directly into any investigation, they could solve the crime and the book would be four pages long … I’ll think of something, I think there will be more, but I just haven’t thought of a storyline yet.’
Luckily for fans, while Michael isn’t working on the next book just yet, a possible television adaptation is in the mix.
‘I literally got an email this morning saying a major American company – I can’t mention the name of the company, but it makes TV shows all over the world – are interested in buying the ‘Evie and Cyrus’ series.’
So, stay tuned. •
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Before becoming a novelist, Michael Robotham was a former feature writer and investigative reporter working in Britain, Australia and America, and with clinical and forensic psychologists as they helped police investigate complex, psychologically driven crimes.
2024 marks the 20-year anniversary of the publication of his debut thriller, The Suspect, which introduced clinical psychologist Joe O’Loughlin, sold more than a million copies around the world and is now a major TV series starring Aidan Turner on ABC TV. Michael’s standalone thriller The Secrets She Keeps was adapted for TV by Network 10 and the BBC.
Michael is the only Australian to twice win the UK’s prestigious Gold Dagger Award for best crime novel, for Life or Death and Good Girl, Bad Girl as well as the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for When She Was Good. Lying Beside You was shortlisted for the Australian Crime Writers Association’s Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction 2023. Storm Child is the fourth novel in his globally bestselling Cyrus Haven and Evie Cormac series.
Michael lives in Sydney, Australia.
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