Michael Robotham gives his Parkinsons-affected psychologist Joe O’Loughlin a break for his thirteenth novel, The Secrets She Keeps. But rest assured, Michael’s fourth standalone – and his first new novel in two years – is a more than acceptable stopgap.
The Secrets She Keeps is a work of powerful psychological drama that will have you aching for its protagonists, in the lonely worlds each inhabits. The tale is told, in alternate chapters, from the viewpoints of Meghan and Agatha, one a successful blogger-wife of a flourishing television personality, the other a single woman with a dream. The two women from different backgrounds have one thing in common, a dangerous secret that could destroy everything they hold dear. An emotionally difficult read in places, it turns out the novel was also pretty difficult to write.
‘It was a really challenging book because the thought that a balding middle aged guy could even think about getting inside the heads of two very different female characters was incredibly daunting,’ Michael says from his home in Sydney. ‘Sometimes you’ll come across a story where one character is really interesting and the other is comparatively dull, so the reader loses interest in one of them quite quickly. I had to get their two stories to marry up and meet in the middle, but they also had to be interesting. The main inciting incident doesn’t really happen until halfway through, which is unusual in a thriller or crime novel. The murder or whatever is usually up front and centre and you go from there. So it was important to make the story and the main characters captivating for almost half the book before the main event takes place.