Close Your Eyes

By: Michael Robotham

Narrated by: Sean Barrett

I close my eyes and feel my heart begin racing. Someone is coming. They're going to find me.

A mother and her teenage daughter are found brutally murdered in a remote farmhouse, one defiled by multiple stab wounds and the other left lying like Sleeping Beauty waiting for her Prince. Reluctantly, clinical psychologist Joe O'Loughlin is drawn into the investigation when a former student, calling himself the Mindhunter, trading on Joe's name, has jeopardised the police inquiry by leaking details to the media and stirring up public anger.

With no shortage of suspects and tempers beginning to fray, Joe discovers links between these murders to a series of brutal attacks where the men and women are choked unconscious and the letter A is carved into their foreheads. As the case becomes ever more complex, nothing is quite what it seems, and soon Joe's fate, and the fates of those closest to him, become intertwined with a merciless, unpredictable killer....

©2015 Bookwrite Pty (P)2015 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

"A writer of the highest class who can create terror from the commonplace and crush the breath out of you." ( Daily Mail)

"I love this guy's books." (Lee Child)

"Robotham doesn't just make me scared for his characters, he makes my heart ache for them." (Linwood Barclay)

"He writes in a voice with a haunting sense of soul." (Peter James)

Gripping and utterly superb

Michael Robotham makes you feel like you’re there in the story every step of the way. I’ve read this book at least three times over the years - one of the best yet.

Fantastic Addition To The Series

I am a huge fan of Michael Robotham in general and an equally huge fan of his Joe O’Loughlin series. He understands that we want both a good mystery story and a ‘novel’, i.e. a prose narrative about relationships. We have followed Joe’s bouts with Parkinson’s disease and his breakup with his wife Julianne. Joe has bad luck in that his investigation of crimes has a way of impinging upon his family life. His kids might be dragged into the action and this, as night follows day, can affect his primary relationship, with Julianne.

In Close Your Eyes his relationship with his family is at the heart of the narrative. Julianne seems open to the possibility of a reconciliation (they were never divorced), something that Joe would very much like to see happen. Unfortunately, Julianne has to go to hospital and Joe must look after his daughters Charlie and Emma while visiting his hospitalised wife as often as possible.

In the meantime there is a murder to solve. A young mother and her daughter have been murdered in a local farm house. (We are at the O’Loughlins’ cottage in Somerset for this novel.) The daughter was dispatched efficiently, the mother slaughtered brutally. As the case develops Joe learns that there have been other related cases, some of whose victims have had A’s carved into their foreheads.

The perp is introduced (but not identified) early in the narrative and we hear his take on things. His life has been very troubled and his family situation continues to haunt him.

On a side note, the novel is set near Weston-super-Mare, about 18 miles from Bristol. As luck would have it, we have friends there and I have seen that area and can attest to the accuracy of the atmospherics which Robotham (an Australian from Sydney) creates.

Bottom line: this is a first-rate Robotham novel and –given some important plot developments which I will not spoil—no readers of the O’Loughlin series should miss it.

Captivated

Once again, I was not able to put this book down.
brilliantly written and narrated

Nailbiting conclusion

What did you love best about Close Your Eyes?

Evolution of the main characters

What did you like best about this story?

Michael has a genius for depth of character, plot and conclusion

What about Sean Barrett’s performance did you like?

Again Sean is champion I google audio books that he narrates and select from there.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Very easily but I life gets in my way

Any additional comments?

This whole series is wonderfully written and read. The characters are real, believable and I can't help but feel I reside a little
in each one. Bravo again.