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    Shatter
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    Shatter
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    Shatter
    Audiobook14 hours

    Shatter

    Written by Michael Robotham

    Narrated by Seán Barrett

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    In "the most suspenseful book I read all year" (Stephen King), a psychologist faces off against a killer who destroys his victims from the inside out.
    Joe O'Loughlin is in familiar territory-standing on a bridge high above a flooded gorge, trying to stop a distraught woman from jumping. "You don't understand," she whispers, and lets go. Joe is haunted by his failure to save the woman, until her teenage daughter finds him and reveals that her mother would never have committed suicide-not like that. She was terrified of heights.

    What could have driven her to commit such a desperate act? Whose voice? What evil?

    Having devoted his career to repairing damaged minds, Joe must now confront an adversary who tears them apart. With pitch-perfect dialogue, believable characters, and astonishingly unpredictable plot twists, Shatter is guaranteed to keep even the most avid thriller readers riveted long into the night.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateFeb 10, 2015
    ISBN9781478931652
    Unavailable
    Shatter
    Author

    Michael Robotham

    Michael Robotham is a former investigative journalist whose bestselling psychological thrillers have been translated into twenty-five languages. He has twice won a Ned Kelly Award for Australia’s best crime novel, for Lost in 2005 and Shatter in 2008. His recent novels include When She Was Good, winner of the UK’s Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for best thriller; The Secrets She Keeps; Good Girl, Bad Girl; When You Are Mine; and Lying Beside You. After living and writing all over the world, Robotham settled his family in Sydney, Australia. 

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    Reviews for Shatter

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      I was enjoying this for the first two thirds, but then the combination of Julianne turning on Joe and the way his family got dragged into terrible danger was all too much for me. I think I'm done with this series.
    • 4/5
      Psychologist, husband, father, and Parkinson's sufferer Joseph O'Loughlin finds himself entirely unwittingly drawn into a complex suspense story when he's drafted to talk a jumper down from a bridge-- a jumper who seems to be being urged to jump. He finds himself against a foe who is sociopathic in the first place and made yet more maladjusted in circumstances that you will discover as you read-- a true psychological challenge who has thrown down the gaunlet and will stop at nothing to get his revenge for wrongs he perceives.Joe, we see immediately, is both mentally and physically vunerable, far from a hard-as-nails hero. His personal relationships are troubled; his health is bad. Though most of the novel is dialogue (and, as a consequence, reads fairly rapidly), these complications serve to form the inner musings and insecurities that make up the internal monologues of the novel. They're brief, but they're forceful, and out of them does rise some compelling, natural dialogue. Supporting cast members are well done. Ruiz is great and something of an enigma, just the sort of person you'd like on your side when it's time not to play by the rules any more. Young Darcy is complex and a particularly well-drawn teenage character, not a cookie-cutter stereotype at all-- kudos to Robotham for not taking the easy way out with "tramuatized teenage girl type A" and just filling in the blanks. Joe's wife is rather shadowy and difficult to pin down, which makes her character all the more intriguing. And though we know who our foe is fairly early on, it doesn't lessen the intensity of his compelling psychology or undercut the full force of his twisted nature, as will sometimes happen when the enemy is a known quantity. Even when the foe is revealed, he keeps revealing layers about himself: once exposed, he's not fully revealed, you might say.A few quibbles: I liked Ronnie a lot, but there is that stereotype of the tough lesbian cop to contend with. Joe's habit of referring to his disease as "Mr. Parkinson" wore a little thin. Joe's daughter's Charlie's evolution from a fairly naive young teenager to a pretty tough girl happened pretty rapidly: entirely believably, I'm not so sure.A final warning: If you're particularly sensitive to books in which children are placed in situations of great emotional or physical duress, you might want to give this one a skip, as it might be uncomfortable reading for you. It's slightly above the norm in that regard as far as thrillers/suspense writing go.
    • 3/5
      I knew where every "twist" was going.Of course the bad guy goes after Joe's family.Julianne says Joe has changed and is looking for some one to blame. Yes the Parkinson's disease has mad him more melancholy. Julianne blames him. She blames him for her missing time with the children. Julianne is mad at him for suspecting her of being unfaithful. But she takes no responsibility for her actions, If you don't want people to think you are having an affair you don't let the office Don Juan put his hands all over you, you don't accept gifts of lingerie and sexy dresses from him.
    • 2/5
      After finishing this novel -- an impulse purchase whilst on vacation -- I was very surprised it received glowing praise from Stephen King. This is not a suspenseful story at all. The ending became obvious about one-third of the way through. I liked a few of the characters but was disappointed by the protagonist, particularly how he views and interacts with the women around him.
    • 3/5
      I was sent this book as part of LT Early Reader’s Program, but I’m not sure why, since the first copyright date in the book in 2008.Nevertheless, here is my review.This is the first book by this author that I have read. Not sure if it will be the last or not. The protagonist is a psychologist with Parkinson’s disease who ends up in a test of wills with a sadistic sexual psychopath. Along the way several women are killed, his family is put in harm’s way, a police procedural plays out.I found the book alternatingly interesting and tedious, and I felt it could have done with a good bit of tighter editing. It goes to 465 pages in the edition I had, and it’s nearly half over before we really get to the meat of the mystery. There is a cover blurb from Stephen King stating, “The most suspenseful book I’ve read all year.” If this is true, Mr. King needs to do more reading. It never grabbed me in a way that made it impossible to put aside when it was time to go to sleep. A lot of loose ends are left hanging, also. For all the big deal that is made about the villain, we never learn the answers about what made him tick. Maybe it’s being saved for a sequel…he wasn’t killed.I'm giving it 3 stars. I didn't really dislike it, some might find it enjoyable. I probably would have set it aside had it not been for my obligation to LT.
    • 4/5
      Shatter. Michael Robotham. 2008. Where has this author been?! I cannot remember where I read about this book but I am so very glad I did! Joe O’Loughlin is a psychologist whose career has been side-lined somewhat because he has Parkinson’s. He has moved his family away from London and is teaching freshman psychology class when he is asked to help talk a suicidal woman from a bridge. He realizes that she is talking to someone on a phone but he cannot get her attention before she jumps; he accepts the police verdict of suicide until the woman’s daughter comes to him and tells him her mother was afraid of heights and would never jump to her death. He fails to convince the police to re-open the case until another woman, a friend of the victim, is found dead in a bizarre posture. Suspense builds as Joe tries to get a handle on the murderer, look after his children and Darcy, the daughter of the first murdered woman; manage his suspensions about his beautiful wife; deal with his physical limitations, and protect his family. I loved his interaction with his children and wife. Thank goodness he appears in more books! Robotham is a new addition to my “must read authors!
    • 5/5
      Robotham’s latest thriller brings back his original protagonist from ‘Suspect’, psychologist Joe O’Laughlin. In this book Joe is battling a psychopath, a grief-stricken teenage girl, Parkinson’s disease, and doubts about his wife’s fidelity. He’s now a part-time professor at the University, spending the rest of his time as a stay-at-home dad to his two young daughters. Joe is asked by the police to talk with a woman threatening to jump from the Clifton Suspension Bridge. When he arrives he finds Christine Wheeler naked, with SLUT written on her stomach and a cell phone to her ear. When he tries talking to her, she whispers, “You don’t understand…” and jumps to her death. It seems to be a clear case of suicide, until Christine’s teenage daughter Darcy shows up on Joe’s doorstep and insists that her mother was afraid of heights and would never have committed suicide in that manner. At the request of the grieving girl, Joe starts investigating and gets help from his friend Vincent Ruiz, now retired from the police force. When a friend of Christine’s is also found dead of an apparent suicide, the police are forced to open an investigation and consider Joe’s conviction that the women were being manipulated. Joe is a compassionate character who is easy to like, because he always tries to do the right thing. He genuinely cares about others and wants to help them. But he also has to answer to his wife’s fears that his involvement with the case will bring danger to their own family. This book was absolutely riveting, the type that grabs hold of your attention and doesn’t let it go until the last page is turned.
    • 3/5
      Terrific thriller and a refreshing change of pace. It did take me a few pages to get used to it being all-British. ie. talking about the boot of a car, and a parking lot is a car park, etc.. But the story was thrilling - - a woman walks naked to a bridge and jumps - - all the time on a cell phone. The lead character is a psychologist who is called in to help. Then another woman is found dead - similar circumstances. The suspect is someone who can hear when a person's mind breaks - - and he enjoys it.



      Exciting book - - all the way till the end.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Very good psychological twist and good choice of lead character with Parkinson's. I really loved 90% of this book until certain predictable things happened.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      My wife picked this up at the library on audio and said she really liked it. I'm not one for thrillers. Basically if it doesn't have magic or aliens or at least swords in it I won't give it a chance. Obviously from my 5 star rating I liked it quite a bit. The writing was AMAZING. EVERY character came to life. There was never any confusion about who was who because you recognized every character immediately.This book is not for the faint of heart. There's some deep psychological doo-doo going on here especially if you're a parent. I don't think it goes too far or anything but it's pretty scary at times.I would definitely recommend this if you liked Silence of the Lambs, though I've only seen that movie and not read the book. I can't believe they haven't made a movie out of this book although, it might just be too dark.The narrator on the audio book was excellent and I also wanted to note that I didn't realized this was the 3rd book in the series but it didn't seem to matter. I was never confused about what was going on.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      One of the members of our book club, The Thrillers & Chillers, had introduced me to Michael Robotham's writings and folks, definitely read of Joe O'Loughlin, a psychologist turned professor, who is dealing with his own problems with Parkinson's disease and his marriage. What a believable character Joe is. This is book number three with Joe O'Loughlin. The first of this series is The Suspect (2004), then Lost (2005) aka The Drowning Man.Shatter opens with the police asking for Joe's help to stop a naked woman from jumping from a bridge. When he gets there he sees the woman talking on a cell phone and without any luck persuading her off the bridge, she jumps. The last words she says are to him - "You don't understand."Joe is troubled with disappointment within himself - that he couldn't save the woman - and as the story moves along, the teenage daughter of the woman finds him and tells him she was not suicidal and her mother had a fear of heights. Joe, being Joe, is soon obsessed with discovering who was on the other end of that phone. Joe starts the search and is caught up in a string of murders. He finds that the killer is more psychotic than he expects but I had felt that the killer still had some 'human' in him, but, being able to break people's minds with words over the phone had me (morbidly/horridly) intrigued to keep turning the pages.Very believable characters, unpredictable plot twists, and definitely worth reading for thriller lovers.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Clever set up but rather too gleefully creepy and misogynistic, and the villain is not as intriguing as he should be. The Parkinson's-afflicted main character and his sidekicks are great characters, though.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      This latest work of suspense from Michael Robotham does not disappoint. Joe O'Loughlin watches a woman jump to her death but as he learns more about her the more he thinks that she didn't jump voluntarily. Someone, somehow, made her jump. He becomes involved in the investigation and the search for the culprit, never realizing that his own family might be at risk...
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed listening to this one but it really grinds my gears (shoutout to Peter Griffin) when a narrator makes two MAIN characters sound exactly the same. In this novel, both Joe and the killer sounded similar so I never quite knew who was talking until after a few sentences of dialogue.

      The story itself was interesting. I didn't know until after I was a few hours in that this is part of a series. I am interested to see what Joe has been up to before. I did not enjoy his relationship with his wife, but I'm not married, so what the hell do I know about whether it is realistic:-)

      I always enjoy listening to the riveting climaxes of crime fiction on audiobooks and this one really came through for me. I liked the mind games the killer played over the phone and I liked the twist about the wife/daughter dual-kidnapping. I felt dissatisfied with the ending but, overall, it was entertaining.
    • 4/5
      Psycholy professor Joe O'Loughlin, is called to a bridge to try to talk down a suicide. The shock of the failed rescue is made worse when the jumper's teenage daughter shows up at Joe's house claiming that her mother would never have jumped. She suffered from a fear of heights.Joe begins to suspect that this woman is the victim of murder. He convinces the police and becomes involved in the investigation, despite the danger to his family.Author Robotham creates a quick moving thriller, which suffers only in the confusion between elements of the UK and US. I found myself constantly rechecking whether the book was based in Great Britain or the US.
    • 4/5
      This is one of those thrillers/suspense novels that deserve the label -- from start to finish I simply couldn't put it down, to the detriment of everything else I was supposed to accomplish in the last 24 hours. Yes, it's formulaic in some ways -- will the flawed but heroic clinical psychologist Joe O'Loughlin catch the bad guy before he can destroy more lives? Will he figure out where he went wrong in time? But while you're reading, you don't really care that there are flaws -- some early clues tip us off to something that O'Loughlin misses a bit too blatantly -- and really are so immersed in the narrative that you don't care.When the book starts, O'Loughlin finds himself on the Clifton suspension bridge outside Bristol, charged with keeping a terrified, naked woman from jumping to her death. Oddly, she seems to be talking on a telephone, and pleading with someone -- and then she jumps. When her teenage daughter shows up on O'Loughlin's doorstep to insist his mother's fear of heights made it unlikely she'd ever commit suicide that way, Joe investigates, and finds his own suspicions mounting that something drove Christine to her death -- or rather, someone, someone particularly evil.Yes, the evildoer here is almost a caricature, but the plot is sufficiently complex, as is Joe's character, that it didn't bother me much. I just held on for the wild rollercoaster ride. I'd definitely recommend this to anyone who enjoys a thumping good read in the form of a suspense novel; 4.2 stars.
    • 5/5
      Joe O'Loughlin, the unlikely protagonist in this page turner, is a professor of Behavioral Psychology who suffers from the early stages of Parkinson's Disease. O'Loughlin has moved his family to the English countryside in hopes of learning to cope with his disease and migrate away from his formerly hectic life in London. However, just as Joe is settling in to his new life, the police request his immediate assistance to help with a suicide attempt in progress. What follows is a murder investigation that matches O'Loughlin's wits against a trained military agent who uses psychology in a very different way. Robothan has pieced together a thrilling murder mystery that will keep you guessing until the very end. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      Good Lord! This was a pulse pounding book. Michael Robotham, where have you been all my life? "Shatter" (thanks LibraryThing!) was my introduction to Michael Robotham. Now I will be tracking down all his previous books. Joe O'Loughlin is a wonderfully flawed psychologist/profiler who gets caught up in a suicide, which becomes a murder. He is also battling Parkinson disease, which adds a bittersweet layer to the story. Also add in a not so stable marriage, his retired cop best friend, and a female DI, who takes no prisoners and you've got yourself a read-all-day-all-night page turner. I couldn't put it down.
    • 4/5
      I thought that this was a good book. When I found out I was getting it from the Library Thing Early Reviewers and saw it was the third book in a series I did go out and read the first 2 before I read this one. I really enjoyed the first 2 books and was a little disappointed with this one. It was an easy to read book but it just seems to have been missing something for me. If you do like a good mystery book I would recommend this series and I would start from book 1. I do plan on reading the 4th book in this series and I am hoping I will enjoy it as much as I enjoyed book 1 and 2.
    • 3/5
      One afternoon Joe O’Loughlin, a clinical psychologist, is asked to help in a crisis situation: a naked woman is standing on a bridge preparing to jump to her death. Joe talks to her briefly but she jumps anyway. Several days later the woman’s teenage daughter, Darcy, appears on Joe’s doorstep and begs him to help her convince Police that her mother didn’t commit suicide. Joe begins to wonder if, somehow, the woman could have been coerced into jumping. He calls on his old friend, now-retired Detective Vincent Ruiz for some help and together they talk to the local police.

      Joe O’Loughlin has appeared in 3 books now although they can all be read as standalones. Each time I meet him I find something else to love. Unlike many of the protagonists in crime fiction Joe is not a troubled loner nor does he have any super human abilities. Even his skills in reading people, which he is mostly very good at, let him down some times. He’s smart, funny and heart-wrenchingly self aware. I particularly like the way Joe deals with the personal issues in his life in a very realistic way. He’s not always sensible (who is?) but nor does he go to the extremes that you see in some fiction that make you wonder how the person could possibly have survived adolescence.

      But the real joy of Joe is the way he interacts with the people around him: his family, his old friend Ruiz and, in this book, young Darcy and the DI in charge of the case, Veronica Cray. There’s always a dry, sarcastic wit to his relationships and it gives the book an undercurrent of humour which is a welcome relief among the dark subject matter. I think the natural-sounding dialogue that peppers the book is Robotham’s best writing and something that sets him apart from other authors.

      Now comes the heretical part of this review: I didn’t find Shatter particularly suspenseful. It was never much of a whodunnit (the culprit was revealed quite early on) nor, really, a why or a even a how dunnit (again all of those were revealed without fanfare and long before the end of the book). In the end it was what happens next story which, especially towards the end, was disappointingly predictable. Most of the story is told from Joe’s perspective but there are also short chapters told from the killer’s point of view and in them he talks about his capacity to break a person’s mind. Although the killer’s methods, described at some length which somehow made them less scary, led to extreme consequences I was never as gobsmackingly shocked as I was supposed to be by the notion that one person could manipulate another into doing something truly awful. I’ve read history, I watch the news and I’ve seen teenage girls in action. So, I never stepped over that line that separates me from knowing I’m in a fictional world to wondering if, maybe, that noise I heard outside the window isn’t evil that somehow leapt from the page.

      Perhaps I have suffered a little too much from the hype that has surrounded this book but it wasn’t the ‘wow’ read for me that others have described. The characters and dialogue are excellent, and well worth reading the book for, but, for me, the story wasn’t as engaging as Robotham’s two earlier books featuring Joe O’Loughlin (Suspect and Lost). I think it relied a little too heavily on one big, hairy, audacious plot point and because that didn’t quite work for me the rest was a little flat.
    • 5/5
      "It’s eleven o’clock in the morning, late September, and outside it’s raining so hard that cows are floating down rivers and birds are resting on their bloated bodies."Shatter hooked me from the first sentence (above) and didn't let go. A fast-paced, suspense-filled thriller. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      Spine-tingling, edge of your seat thriller, keep turning the pages!How can someone have such an evil mind?! Who could do such a thing?!Every situation makes you want to help Joe solve these heinous crimes and bring justice to the families. Even at the possible cost of his own marriage, Joe cannot turn away and let others try to apprehend a mastermind who seems to be able to control women’s minds.
    • 4/5
      This book was a very good psychological thriller. Although it was bordering on 500 pages, it moved quickly and was easy to read. The premise behind the book was interesting being what would make someone jump from a bridge who is afrad of heights? The psychology behind it was fascinating.Although it was an easy read, I did feel that the mystery behind the story could be solved very early in the book. With that said, it was still a good story that will keep you reading until the very end.Reader received a complimentary copy from the Library Thing Early Reviewers Program.
    • 4/5
      Even though this book borders on being a chunkster (496 pages), it reads quickly and it's hard to put down once you're in it. Joe O'Loughlin has stopped seeing patients in his psychology service for the quieter life of an academic, lecturing at a university. His expertise, however, is renown, and when faced with a nude woman threatening to jump off a bridge, the police show up to take him to the scene to talk her out of committing suicide. She totally ignores him and seems to be listening to someone on her cell phone. Before he could connect with her, she jumps. Oh, well. He tried. Then the woman's daughter comes to him and convinces him that her fear of heights would make it impossible for her to kill herself that way. A second woman is found in the middle of a field, hooded, and shackled, dead from hypothermia. It now looks like there is a serious psycho out there. Joe has chosen to take his family out of London and to the country around Bath because he is suffering from Parkinson's. As the story is written in first person, we get an intimate look at how Parkinson's affects one's body. Stress increases the effects and Joe has to overcome a lot of stress.When I read a book written in the first person it seems to me that I am either listening to the person narrating his story or reading his written account. This story somehow made me think of the sections of a reality show where a contestant is explaining events to the audience. I understand that it allows the narrator to give us more details about his disease but it sometimes seemed forced.I am usually easily deceived by red herrings and miss clues in mysteries but I was always one or two steps ahead of the narrator here. This did not prevent me from flying through the story to see how it would resolve.
    • 5/5
      This is by far my favorite book in the Joe O'Loughlin series. This is the most suspenseful books in the series, and it kept my on the edge of my seat the whole time. This is one of the best, if not the best psychological thrillers that I have read.I was glad to see this book go back to concentrating on Joe instead of Ruiz. Before reading this book I still had hard feelings towards Ruiz but once I saw their friendship in this book my hard feelings went away. I think they have mostly just shifted to Julianne instead. She may blame Joe for what happened to their family, but she is not blameless.I loved this book and can't wait to read more of this series. I have grown quite attached to Joe and can't wait to see what he does next. I would recommend this book and the series to friends and family.*I received this book from a Librarything Early Reviewers giveaway which in no way affects the content of my review.*
    • 4/5
      Psychologist, husband, father, and Parkinson's sufferer Joseph O'Loughlin finds himself entirely unwittingly drawn into a complex suspense story when he's drafted to talk a jumper down from a bridge-- a jumper who seems to be being urged to jump. He finds himself against a foe who is sociopathic in the first place and made yet more maladjusted in circumstances that you will discover as you read-- a true psychological challenge who has thrown down the gaunlet and will stop at nothing to get his revenge for wrongs he perceives.Joe, we see immediately, is both mentally and physically vunerable, far from a hard-as-nails hero. His personal relationships are troubled; his health is bad. Though most of the novel is dialogue (and, as a consequence, reads fairly rapidly), these complications serve to form the inner musings and insecurities that make up the internal monologues of the novel. They're brief, but they're forceful, and out of them does rise some compelling, natural dialogue. Supporting cast members are well done. Ruiz is great and something of an enigma, just the sort of person you'd like on your side when it's time not to play by the rules any more. Young Darcy is complex and a particularly well-drawn teenage character, not a cookie-cutter stereotype at all-- kudos to Robotham for not taking the easy way out with "tramuatized teenage girl type A" and just filling in the blanks. Joe's wife is rather shadowy and difficult to pin down, which makes her character all the more intriguing. And though we know who our foe is fairly early on, it doesn't lessen the intensity of his compelling psychology or undercut the full force of his twisted nature, as will sometimes happen when the enemy is a known quantity. Even when the foe is revealed, he keeps revealing layers about himself: once exposed, he's not fully revealed, you might say.A few quibbles: I liked Ronnie a lot, but there is that stereotype of the tough lesbian cop to contend with. Joe's habit of referring to his disease as "Mr. Parkinson" wore a little thin. Joe's daughter's Charlie's evolution from a fairly naive young teenager to a pretty tough girl happened pretty rapidly: entirely believably, I'm not so sure.A final warning: If you're particularly sensitive to books in which children are placed in situations of great emotional or physical duress, you might want to give this one a skip, as it might be uncomfortable reading for you. It's slightly above the norm in that regard as far as thrillers/suspense writing go.
    • 4/5
      Great mystery. Joe is a physiologist who has been drawn into a suicide. He thought that he was just going to enjoy his first day in his new teaching position. Instead he is called to a bridge where a naked woman is going to jump. As he is trying to talk her down he sees that she is talking on the phone. He swears that he hears someone to tell the woman to jump. Next thing he knows the dead woman's daughter is at his door swearing that her mother would never have committed suicide much less jump. She was scared of heights. Not only is Joe's marriage on the edge but so is his career. He has to prove that this woman was murdered with out loosing his family.
    • 3/5
      A little bit disappointing. The story was fine but not as good as previous stories.
    • 5/5
      Excellent thriller. Very dark! Sometimes seems that the next step is too obvious, but then the plot twists again and things don't happen quite the way you expect. Edge of the seat stuff!
    • 5/5
      Let me just say that if I could, I would give this book 6 stars! Fantastic thriller. I haven't read a thriller this good in a long long time. This author scares me with the way he thinks and his ability to write it. It was creepy, scary and funny at times with likable characters. I will definitely read more of his work. Someone said this book was predictable and I found it to be anything BUT predictable and I really like that in a book. I couldn't put it down. I will definitely recommend this book to anyone!