Bashir “Bish” Ortley, a London cop — currently suspended after his drinking problem led to an incident with another cop — gets a phone call: a bus full of British schoolkids has been bombed in France, and his teenage daughter was on board.
And worse, one of the other passengers is Violette LeBrac, whose mother has been in prison for thirteen years after she confessed to helping her father bomb a supermarket — and Bish was the cop who took four-year-old Violette from her mother’s arms after the arrest.
Violette is the obvious suspect, but before the investigation can even begin, she has disappeared, taking a thirteen-year-old boy with her.
Controversial OzYA opinion: I’m really ambivalent about Melina Marchetta’s work. Looking for Alibrandi was my favourite book in grade nine, but then it became assigned reading for grade twelve advanced English, and didn’t really hold up.
So I’m not a wholehearted Marchetta fan. I’ve liked some of her books, hated one, didn’t bother with her fantasy series. And YET, when I heard that her next book was a thriller aimed at an adult audience, I was intrigued. (Crime fiction: my other passion.) I bought Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil from Kobo and spent the weekend on the couch, inhaling it.
It was wonderful.
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