Monday, September 19, 2022

Lying beside you

Lying Beside You is another excellent crime novel in the Cyrus Haven series by Australian author, Michael Robotham. 

Cyrus, a forensic psychologist, is called in to assist in a police investigation when an older man is murdered and his daughter disappears. Her body is later found in a drain. A short time later another woman disappears from a hotel where Evie is working. Investigations show that the two women once worked together as nurses with a third woman who was attacked eight years previously. The man arrested for that attack has just been released from prison but the nurse who was originally attacked is beginning to doubt that Mitch was the person who attacked her.

Elias, Cyrus' brother is given occasional day release from the psychiatric home where he was imprisoned twenty years earlier after mudering his and Cyrus' parents and two sisters. Cyrus has agreed to allow Elias to stay with him with some misgivings. He is also concerned as to how the presence of Elias will affect Evie who also lives at the house.

Evie continues to have problems relating to other people, especially people her age, and continues to have flashbacks to events in her past. However she does strive, sometimes reluctantly, to follow Cyrus' advice and also uses her ability to be able to identify when someone is lying to assist Cyrus in his investigations.

How events from the past affect the thinking and reasoning of people in the present is one of the book's themes as well as providing a study as to how some people attempt to cope with grief many years after the event.

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