Book Review: Lost

Reviewed By: Woodstock - RAM

Lost     Amazon US HC Amazon UK PB Amazon UK HC Amazon Canada HC
Michael Robotham
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Thriller   Police Procedural
Doubleday March 2006

London cop Vincent Ruiz comes to consciousness bobbing in the Thames, holding onto a buoy, with the lights and activity of the rescue squad buzzing around him. Naturally enough when he is settled in the hospital, warm and dry, with the gunshot wound to his thigh and buttocks bandaged, authorities and medical personnel arrive with dozens of questions. Questions Vincent cannot answer. Who shot him? Why is his blood on a nearby abandoned boat, along with the blood of other unknown persons? What exactly was he doing near the river in the first place, since none of his open cases involved any action in that area?

Ruiz cannot remember anything of the events immediately before being found, and is unnerved to realize that only a handful of his questioners believe that he truly is amnesiac.

>From this intriguing beginning, Robotham takes us on a twisted path through present day London, only very occasionally letting us glimpse popular tourist attractions. Instead he serves up several atmospheric trips through the sewer system, as Ruiz traces the fate of a young girl who was kidnapped several years previously. She was never located nor was any evidence of her death ever identified.

Assisted by a psychologist friend along with another cop and a motley assortment of street people and sewer dwellers, Ruiz persists - both to remember how he was wounded and once and for all to learn the truth about the missing girl.

Woodstock - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Woodstock - RAM