In Michael Robotham’s latest Joe O’Loughlin mystery book O’Loughlin is still separated from his wife, he and his eldest child Charlie are on rocky terms, and his ongoing battle with Parkenson’s is a day to day battle. Despite it all Joe manages. Then one day, while dropping his children off at their mother’s house, he finds Charlie’s best friend Sienna Hegarty at the door, covered in blood, scared out of her mind. Was she the victim or the perpetrator of some horrible crime? When Joe throws himself into investigating the truth of the matter it shatters his world.

Over my lifetime, so far,  I’ve read thousands of books. When I’m done with them I trade them at the used book store or give them away. It is seldom that I find a book so intriguing that I keep it so that I can read it again. Bleed For Me is one of those rare books that I make an exception for. I literally had to limit myself to how much time a day I could read this book. It not only grabbed me and kept me reading for hours but it also seemed to stir in me something emotional; actually altering my mood from chapter to chapter. The reason is that Michael Robotham just doesn’t create his characters and toss them into their respective parts in the mystery at hand, he spends time grooming them and fleshing them out so that when you see their name on paper you have everything you’ll ever need to know about them, as if they were your next door neighbor or best friend. Joe O’Loughlin might as well be a real person with all the time and effort Robotham took to describe his ticks and quirks and reactions to things all around him. He is a psychologist with a scrutinizing eye, a loving father and husband, a determined believer in justice, and damaged. Simply amazing the amount of detail you can squeeze into 419 pages and how effective that detail can be in putting you in the moment, providing intensity, hope, desperation for a fictional world.

The story within Bleed For Me is intricately written so that the mystery expands and you’re never really on queue with what’s happening. I don’t want to give even one iota of information away because that would ruin the fun of finding yourself foiled time after time as you read and try to find footing in this complex mystery, but nothing is ever really what it seems. As the story unfolds the world of Joe O’Loughlin expands with characters reaching out from school teachers to Nazi radicals to blackmailers and child abusers. His investigation seems ever expanding as he gets close to one answer only to find more disturbing questions and realities about the tiny world he’d been living in and how close everything about this mystery comes to home. With the help of his friend, former detective, Ruiz and almost unwilling police woman Ronnie Cray, can Joe solve the crime without getting himself or anyone else killed in the process? My suggestion is to run out and get yourself a copy. I would consider it money very well spent. Good luck putting this one down. Enjoy.