Michael Robotham's Say You're Sorry, the fifth novel featuring clinical psychologist Joe O'Loughlin, plumbs the depths of the depravity sociopaths inflict on young girls, a recurring theme in this series. Three years after Piper Hadley and Tash McBain, both 15, went missing, Tash's body shows up frozen in a lake near a farmhouse in which two people have been savagely murdered. Police ask O'Loughlin to evaluate a suspect in custody, which leads to his hunch not just that the two incidents are related, but also that Piper is alive and being held nearby. Time might be running out, though, and O'Loughlin must use all his deductive skills to find her before the killer gets rid of her, too.
O'Loughlin's heroism in this novel, as throughout the series, doesn't come from martial-arts skills or Navy SEAL training; in fact, Parkinson's sometimes causes his body to fail him. Instead, his heroism stems from his intellect and his immense compassion for others.
Robotham also does an impressive job of capturing the voice and nature of teenage girls. Piper's diary entries never read as if they were written by a man, and O'Loughlin's adolescent daughter, Charlie, is realistically mercurial without being annoying. The motivation for the perpetrator's horrific crimes feels a bit thin; then again, even in the real world, people seem to require very little provocation to do unspeakable things. --Elyse Dinh-McCrilllis, freelance writer/editor, blogging at Pop Culture Nerd