The pace, characters, and plot of this mystery are well done--as is Joe Jameson's expert narration. The author continues his dual-protagonist series featuring Cyrus, a forensic investigator, and Evie, a young woman who has been scarred by her past. Evie becomes involved as Cyrus tries to identify the link among women who are being attacked. As the crimes unfold, Cyrus's brother returns from prison to live with him. Every character--major or minor--takes on a clear personality through Jameson's inflections, tones, and UK accents. The varying voices are distinct. For example, Cyrus tends to be calmly controlled, while Evie is continually ticked off and fights with almost everyone. The audiobook has a riveting ending. M.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Lying Beside You
Narrated by Joe Jameson
Michael RobothamUnabridged — 10 hours, 37 minutes
Lying Beside You
Narrated by Joe Jameson
Michael RobothamUnabridged — 10 hours, 37 minutes
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Overview
Rich and suspenseful, this simple whodunit quickly spirals into so much more, keeping you guessing all the way through. The Cyrus Haven series continues to deliver with a cast of characters that are easy to fall in love with, and there’s more to come!
Twenty years ago, Cyrus Haven survived a family massacre. The killer? His brother Elias.
Now Elias is applying for release from a secure psychiatric hospital-and Cyrus is expected to forgive and welcome him home. In this “brilliant novel” (The Globe and Mail, Toronto), Elias is returning to a very different world. Cyrus is now a successful psychologist, working with the police, sharing his house with Evie Cormac, a damaged and gifted teenager who can tell when someone is lying.
When a man is murdered and his daughter Maya Kirk disappears, Cyrus is called in to profile the killer and help piece together Maya's last hours. Soon, a second victim is taken, and Evie is the only person who glimpsed the man behind the wheel. But there's a problem. Only two people believe her. One is Cyrus.
The other is the killer.
Editorial Reviews
12/12/2022
In British author Robotham’s fine third Cyrus Haven novel (after 2020’s When She Was Good), forensic psychologist Cyrus consults with police when a man and his daughter are found murdered in their home. After the disappearance of a second victim, Cyrus begins to see connections to a fatal incident that occurred years earlier. However, when Evie Cormac, his bright but troubled ward, inadvertently interferes in the investigation, Cyrus’s ability to probe further into the mystery is compromised. Meanwhile, his own fractured past is about to catch up with him. When Cyrus was a boy, his older brother, Elias, then 19, murdered their parents and twin sisters, and after 20 years in a psychiatric hospital, Elias is now being released. Can Cyrus and Evie endure living under the same roof with a psychotic killer? Robotham does a good job infusing suspense into the well-constructed plot, but at the end of the day this series is all about Cyrus and Evie. While pairings of older male investigators with younger female protégés are fairly common in crime fiction, Cyrus and Evie stand out from the pack. Readers will want to see a lot more of them. Agent: Richard Pine, InkWell Management. (Feb.)
"This brilliant novel is a whodunnit that morphs into a serial murder that evolves into a chase-to-save-the victim, and then adds a final twist. . . . a simply terrific mystery novel."—Globe and Mail
“The guy can't write a bad book. This is one of his best, suspenseful and hard to put down.” —Stephen King
"A riveting page-turner." —Megan Goldin, author of The Night Swim
"[An] expertly paced and psychologically acute novel . . . [with] insightfully drawn characters and [a] superb sense of place that the author conjures up with laconic ease, razor-sharp wit, and, above all, compassion. . . . Gripping and insightful." —Kirkus (starred review)
"I loved Lying Beside You. Michael Robotham is such a wonderfully perceptive writer; rich, real characters who are constantly surprising . . . I could read about these two forever." —Alex Marwood, author of The Wicked Girls
“Not just a cleverly constructed crime novel . . . it’s also an achingly beautiful story about trust, redemption and love that had me intermittently catching my breath.” —Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
“Thoughtful . . . it isn’t easy to maintain a balance between two such different plot strands, but Robotham does it brilliantly.” —Sunday Times (UK), Best Crime Books of 2022
★ 02/10/2023
Cyrus Haven, forensic psychologist and profiler, returns in Robotham's powerful and complex series (following When She was Good). As Cyrus contemplates the potential day release of his brother, Elias, from long-term psychiatric confinement, he also copes with his housemate, Evie, who struggles with multiple demons of her own. Evie is a complicated character with a remarkable gift: she instinctively knows when someone is telling the truth. After having served most of his sentence for sexual assault and actual bodily harm, Mitchell Coates is referred to Cyrus's clinical practice by his parole officer. Mitch desperately needs work, and Cyrus offers him some odd jobs at his house. Mitch gratefully accepts, and thus meets Evie, who realizes that he is innocent. Then the body of a young woman is found, and another woman goes missing. The woman's death harkens back eerily to the crime supposedly committed by Mitch. Cyrus knows that he must unravel a maze of missed evidence and possible corruption before the missing woman falls victim to the murderer. Meanwhile, Elias returns home…VERDICT Written to Robotham's usual high standard, this terrific read will delight fans of his work.—Penelope J.M. Klein
The pace, characters, and plot of this mystery are well done--as is Joe Jameson's expert narration. The author continues his dual-protagonist series featuring Cyrus, a forensic investigator, and Evie, a young woman who has been scarred by her past. Evie becomes involved as Cyrus tries to identify the link among women who are being attacked. As the crimes unfold, Cyrus's brother returns from prison to live with him. Every character--major or minor--takes on a clear personality through Jameson's inflections, tones, and UK accents. The varying voices are distinct. For example, Cyrus tends to be calmly controlled, while Evie is continually ticked off and fights with almost everyone. The audiobook has a riveting ending. M.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
★ 2022-11-29
Twenty years after the brutal killing of his parents and little sisters, a forensic psychologist faces the prospect of welcoming home the schizophrenic brother who committed the crime—who is now being released from custody—while investigating a double murder that will imperil the lives of those closest to him.
At the outset of this expertly paced and psychologically acute novel, 33-year-old Cyrus introduces himself as “the boy who survived.” The killings that left him orphaned and that branded his older brother a monster belong, after all, to the distant past. But now Elias, age 39, is deemed cured and is about to reenter Cyrus’ life and disrupt a household that is a haven for Cyrus’ friend Evie, who has suffered more than most. “I’ve been beaten, starved, and denied affection,” the young Albanian woman explains, “...until each new bruise became another merit badge.” As tough as she is childlike, Evie also has an uncanny ability to tell when people are lying. And because lying is as common in Nottingham, England as it is anywhere else, Evie can be an uncomfortable presence. But when a double murder—of an elderly father and his daughter—draws Cyrus into a mystery that deepens as young women go missing, Evie’s intuitive skills prove invaluable. All of which might strain credulity were it not for the insightfully drawn characters and superb sense of place that the author conjures up with laconic ease, razor-sharp wit, and, above all, compassion. “Bare branches reach out across the drainage canal,” he writes of a farmland crime scene, “where the water looks black as sump oil....A shuffling figure…is moving gingerly through the mud and reeds towards a bundle of rags.” A police office is about to uncover a corpse—and as we read we smell the pre-dawn air and sense the imminent horror.
Gripping and insightful.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940174912946 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Simon & Schuster |
| Publication date: | 02/14/2023 |
| Series: | Cyrus Haven Series , #3 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
| Sales rank: | 1,071,878 |
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1: Cyrus 1 Cyrus
If I could tell you one thing about my brother, it would be this: two days after his nineteenth birthday, he killed our parents and our twin sisters because he heard voices in his head. As defining events go, nothing else comes close for Elias, or for me.
I have often tried to imagine what went through his mind on that cool autumn evening, when our neighbors began closing their curtains to the coming night and the streetlights shone with misty yellow halos. What did the voices say? What possible words could have made him do the things he did?
I have tortured myself with what-ifs and maybes. What if I hadn’t stopped to buy hot chips on my way home from football practice? What if I hadn’t propped my bike outside Ailsa Piper’s house, hoping to glimpse her in her garden or coming home from her netball practice? What if I had pedaled faster and arrived home sooner? Could I have stopped him, or would I be dead too?
I am the boy who survived, the one who hid in the garden shed, crouching among the tools, smelling the kerosene and paint fumes and grass clippings, while sirens echoed through the streets of Nottingham.
In my nightmares, I always wake as I step into the kitchen, wearing muddy football socks. My mother is lying on the floor amid the frozen peas, which had spilled across the white tiles. Chicken stock is bubbling on the stove and her famous paella has begun to stick in the heavy-based pan.
I miss my mum the most. I feel guilty about playing favorites, but nobody is around to criticize my choices, except for Elias, and he doesn’t get to choose. Ever.
Dad died in the sitting room, crouching in front of the DVD player because one of the twins had managed to get a disk stuck in the machine. He raised one hand to protect himself and lost two fingers and a thumb, before the knife severed his spine.
Upstairs, in the bedroom, Esme and April were doing their homework or playing games. Esme, older by twenty minutes, and therefore bossier, was usually the first to do everything, but it was April, dressed in a unicorn onesie, who ran towards the knife, trying to protect her sister. Esme had to be dragged from beneath her bed and died with a rug bunched beneath her body and a ukulele in her hand.
Many of these details have the power to close my throat or wake me screaming, but as snapshots they are fading. My memories aren’t as vivid as they once were. The colors. The smells. The sounds. The fear.
For example, I can no longer remember what color dress my mother was wearing, or which of the twins had her hair in braids that week. (Esme and April took it in turns to help their teachers differentiate between them, or maybe to confuse them further.)
And I can’t remember if Dad had opened a bottle of home brew—a six o’clock ritual in our household, when he uncapped his latest batch with a brass Winston Churchill bottle opener. With great ceremony, he would pour the “amber nectar” into a pint glass, holding it up to the light to study the color and opacity. And when he drank, he would swish that first sip around in his mouth, sucking in air, like a wine connoisseur, saying things like, “Bit malty... a little cloudy... a tad early... half-decent... buttery... quenching... perfect in another week.”
It is these small details that elude me. I can’t remember if I knocked the mud off my football boots, or if I chained up my bike, or if I closed the side gate. I can remember stopping to wash the salt from my hands and to gulp down water, because Mum hated me spoiling my appetite by eating junk food so close to dinnertime. In the same breath, she’d complain about me having “hollow legs” and “eating her out of house and home.”
I miss her cooking. I miss her embarrassing hugs in public. I miss her spitting on tissues and wiping food off my face. I miss her trying to slick down my cowlick. I miss her nagging me about telling ghost stories to the twins, or leaving the toilet seat up or the cap off the toothpaste.
I had nobody to nag me after the murders. My grandparents didn’t have the heart. They were grieving too. I became the boy who was pitied and pointed at and whispered about. Befriended. Bullied. Cosseted. Counseled. The boy who did drugs and cut himself and turned up drunk at school. A hard child to love. Not a child at all, not after what I’d seen.
Monday morning, at a quarter to ten, and I’m sitting in the reception area of Rampton Secure Hospital, an hour’s drive north of Nottingham. In fifteen minutes, a panel of three people—a judge, a consultant psychiatrist, and a layperson—will hear an application from my brother to be released. It has been twenty years since my parents and sisters died. I am now thirty-three. Elias is thirty-nine. The boy is a man. The brother wants to come home.
For years, I have told people that I want what’s best for Elias, without knowing exactly what that means and whether it extends to setting him free. As a forensic psychologist, I understand mental illness. I should be able to separate the person from the act—to hate the sin but forgive the sinner.
I have read stories about forgiveness. People who have visited killers in prison, offering sympathy and absolution. They say things like “You took a piece out of my heart that can never be replaced, but I forgive you.”
One woman, a mother in her sixties, lost her only son, who was stabbed to death outside a party. After the jury convicted the killer, a boy of sixteen, she forgave the teenager. Doubled over in shock, she kept repeating, “I just hugged the man that murdered my son.” In the next breath, she said, “I felt something leave me. Instantly, I knew all the hatred and bitterness and animosity was gone.”
A better me, a kinder soul, an empath, a religious man, would show mercy and give Elias the pardon he seeks. Unconditionally. Without question or hesitation. I am not that man.
Dr. Baillie swipes a security card and comes to collect me from the waiting room. He is Elias’s caseworker. Fiftyish, compact, stern, a psychiatrist with a short-trimmed beard and a greying ponytail that seems to be dragging his hairline higher up his forehead.
“How is it going?” I ask.
“It looks promising.”
For whom, I want to ask, but I know whose side Dr. Baillie is on. He assumes I’m with him. Maybe I am.
He waves to a security guard behind a Perspex screen. A door is unlocked and we are escorted along wide corridors that smell of pine-scented floor polish and phenol.
Rampton is one of three high-security psychiatric hospitals in England. According to the Daily Mail, it houses the “worst of the worst,” but reporters tend to focus on the high-profile patients, the “rippers,” “butchers,” and “slashers” who make better clickbait than the bulk of inmates, being treated for personality or mood disorders; illnesses that don’t involve a body count.
We have arrived at a large room where two dozen chairs, most of them empty, are set out in front of a long, polished table. A side door swings open. Elias enters. He is patted down one final time, before being told to sit. He waves to me. Relief in his eyes.
We don’t look like brothers. He has put on weight over the years—due to medications and inactivity—and his hair is now flecked with grey above his ears. He has a round, blotchy face, a thin mouth, and eyes that are brown and intelligent yet strangely vacant.
Today, he is wearing his best clothes, beige chinos and a neatly ironed white shirt, and I see comb marks in his lightly oiled hair. Straight lines, front to back.
I shuffle along the row of seats until I’m close enough to shake his damp hand.
“You came.”
“Of course. How are you?”
“Nervous.”
“Dr. Baillie says you’ve done well so far.”
“I hope so.”
Elias glances anxiously at the main table and the three empty chairs.
Another door opens and three people enter. The panel. Two men and a woman. They take their seats. Each has a name badge, but they make a point of introducing themselves. The legal representative, Judge Aimes, is a small, rather plump man in a pin-striped suit, with greying hair swept back to form a wave that covers a bald spot. The psychiatrist, Dr. Steger, is wearing a business shirt, rolled to his elbows, and a Marylebone Cricket Club tie. His hair is spiked with gel, and he has a heavy silver bracelet instead of a wristwatch. The lay member of the panel, Mrs. Sheila Haines, looks like my old kindergarten teacher, and I can imagine her jollying along proceedings and suggesting a mid-morning “fruit break.”
Everybody new in the room must be identified. Their eyes turn to me.
“I am Cyrus Haven. Elias’s brother.”
“Are you his closest family?” asks the judge.
I’m his only family, I want to say, but that’s not quite true. He still has grandparents, aunts, uncles, and a handful of cousins, who have been remarkably silent for two decades. I doubt if being related to Elias is one of their dinner party stories.
“I’m his nearest living relative,” I say, and immediately wish I’d used different words.
“Are you a medical doctor?” asks Mrs. Haines.
“I’m a forensic psychologist.”
“How fascinating.”
Judge Aimes wants to move on. He addresses Elias.
“Have you been given any medication that might affect your ability to participate in these proceedings?”
“Only my usual drugs,” says Elias, in a voice that is louder than the occasion demands.
“What are you taking?” asks the psychiatrist.
“Clozapine.”
“Do you know what would happen if you stopped taking your medication?”
“I would get sick again.” He adds quickly, “But I’m better now.”
Judge Aimes looks up from his notes. “We have received reports from two consultant psychiatrists, as well as heard oral submissions from Dr. Baillie and the ward nurse and two resident psychiatrists. Have you been shown these statements?”
Elias nods.
“Do you have any questions?”
“No, sir.”
“This is your opportunity to make your case, Elias. Tell us what you’d like to happen now.”
Elias pushes back his chair and is about to stand when the judge says he should stay seated. Elias takes a piece of paper from his pocket.
“I would like to express my thanks to the panel for this opportunity,” he says, blinking at the page, as though he’s forgotten his glasses. Does he wear them? It’s been years since I’ve seen him read anything apart from the comic books and graphic novels I bring him when I visit. Dad needed reading glasses when he turned forty, and I expect it will happen to me.
Elias continues. “I know what I did, and I know why it happened. I am a schizophrenic. What I experienced that day—what I saw and heard: the voices, the hallucinations—none of that was real. But I did unspeakable things to my family. Unforgivable things.”
He looks quickly at me and away again.
“I have to live with that stain on my soul. I broke many hearts—including my own—and every day I pray to God for His forgiveness.”
This is also new information, although I’ve noticed him dropping Bible quotes into our conversations on my fortnightly visits to Rampton. He wipes perspiration from his top lip.
“I have been in this place for more than seven thousand days and in all that time I have never left the grounds to visit the shops, or see a movie, or walk along a beach or ride a bike. I want to decorate a Christmas tree and wrap presents and go on holidays. I want to live a normal life, to make friends and get a job and meet a girl.”
I picture him practicing this speech for weeks, looking at his reflection in the anti-break mirror.
“What job would you do?” asks the judge.
“I would continue to study law. One day I hope to be sitting where you are, helping people.”
“That’s very noble,” says Mrs. Haines.
Dr. Steger seems less impressed. “Almost half of all patients we release fail to keep taking their medication. Eighty percent of them have relapsed within two years.”
“That wouldn’t happen to me,” says Elias.
“How can we be sure?”
“I have worked on a recovery plan. I have coping skills.”
“Where would you live?”
“With my brother, Cyrus.”
The panel members look to me. I nod. Dry-mouthed.
“Do you have any questions for Elias, Dr. Haven?” asks the judge.
Elias suddenly looks flustered. He didn’t expect me to speak.
“How did it begin?” I ask. “The voices.”
He blinks at me, as though unsure of the question. The silence fills every corner of the room and rises like water, making my ears pop.
He finally speaks. “There was only one. I thought it was my imagination at first.”
“What did it say?”
“I didn’t think it was talking to me. It never said my name.”
“What did it say?”
“It... it... talked about someone else. ‘Can he stay awake all night?’ ‘Can he skip school?’ ‘Can he steal money from Dad’s wallet?’”
“Was the voice telling you to do these things?”
“I didn’t think so—not at first.”
“Why did you listen?”
“I thought it would make the voice go away.”
Nothing Elias has said is new. It has been documented, discussed, and analyzed. He is a case study now, taught to university students who are studying psychiatry and psychology and sociology.
“Do you ever think about them?” I ask.
Again, he blinks at me.
“Mum and Dad. Esme and April. Do you ever think about them?”
He shrugs.
“Why not?”
“It upsets me.”
“Did you love them?”
“I was sick. I did a bad thing.”
“Yes, but did you love them?”
“Of course.”
“Do you love me?”
“I barely know you,” he whispers.
“I appreciate your honesty.”
His eyes have filled with tears. “I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?”
“For what I did.”
“And now you’ve changed?”
He nods.
I glance at the judge and tell him I’m finished.
“Well, let’s take a break,” he says, addressing Elias. “We shall have a decision for you shortly.”
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