The Silent Children by Carol Wyer

3.5 Stars

I have to be really, really careful about how I review this book as the thing that irritated me the most about it would constitute a major spoiler so I can't really put it into a review.  Even an oblique reference would blow the story or would spoil the guessing game for a reader that was unfortunate enough to have read one my waffly reviews first.  So now I have to think about how I am going to review this book and it isn't easy.

I think I'll start by saying how much I am enjoying the Robyn Carter series overall.  Robyn herself isn't a superwoman, she is flawed and has moments of frailty.  She has a dark personal history (loss of her romantic partner Davies, subsequent miscarriage), struggles with work/life balance and is determined to be the best she can at her job.  Even better she seems to have garnered genuine respect from her team and that is what they are - a team.  I think that is what really keeps me reading this series, the dynamics of the investigations through the whole series so far feel realistic.  Yes, there is room for hunches and gut feelings but a lot of it is simply soul destroying mundane and repetitive work coupled with long waits for the processing of forensic evidence - no CSI style instant results here.

In this particular book we have a series of seemingly unrelated deaths, one that may not even be a murder.  They are allocated to Robyn's team because they just happen to be on shift at the time.  As the reader you know they must be at least tangentially related or else they wouldn't be in the tale but it is as difficult for us as for the team to link them together.  Then you have the flashbacks to an abused childhood, a plagued adolescence and an early adulthood that is reflective of those situations.  Just who the boy is that suffers these injustices is hidden from the reader until quite late on, we only really find out the identity close to Robyn's shocking discovery about two people who are not what they seem throughout the majority of the book.

I wasn't really on board with the final denouement either.  It just seemed all a bit of a let down somehow.  Yes, the team cracks the case but there was just something missing and the motive(s) seemed flimsy at best.

Still a really good read, but mainly because of Anna, Mitz and the rest of the team taking their starring roles.  To be honest I think I could read about this lot not having a case to solve and just sat in their office shooting the breeze and enjoy it.