Michael Robotham celebrates his 20th year as a published author with his 18th novel and his fourth featuring Cyrus Haven. His characters are likable and demand readers’ sympathy as they battle hardship while dealing with whatever case they're working on.

Cyrus Haven is a psychologist working with the British police, and he's housing Evie Cormac. STORM CHILD is really Evie’s novel, and the title refers to her. She has a mysterious past that has left her with serious PTSD, trauma and many unanswered questions about her identity.

"STORM CHILD is far different from what I have read previously from Michael Robotham, and the costs at stake for our protagonists never have been higher or more important. The ending is touching and extremely satisfying."

Thankfully, the case that Cyrus falls into quite by accident will cross lines with the mystery of Evie’s past in amazing ways. Early on and quite ironically, based on how she came into Cyrus’ life, Evie can’t swim. However, she proudly states that people who don’t swim avoid the water so they won’t drown. If she were in it by accident, she simply would cling to whatever wreckage is around as she has done her entire life. This is truly a metaphor for who Evie is, which is all the reader needs to know about her and her fortitude.

Cyrus is aware that he is one of the few people who knows who Evie really is, and even he doesn’t know everything. Perhaps that is why, on a whim, they enter a psychic’s place of business while visiting Lincolnshire. Though Cyrus is not a believer, Evie wants any answers she can get. He leaves her to the psychic and roams the grounds until he notices some commotion on the beach. It appears that several bodies are bobbing in the ocean; he and a few others wade in to pull them out. Regrettably, all are deceased except for a 14-year-old boy. Evie arrives late to this unfolding tragedy, and it sets off something inside that turns her catatonic.

Cyrus brings Evie to the nearest hospital, where they tend to her and bring her out of her stressed state. There is definitely a connection between the bodies in the ocean and Evie’s past. When it is discovered by the local P.D. that the deceased were all passengers on a boat containing refugees from Calais, that is the answer to the puzzle as Evie and her mother and sister arrived in the UK the same way. The 14-year-old tells police that the boat was deliberately rammed, tossing everyone violently into the ocean. Unfortunately, his injuries are too serious, and he succumbs to them.

Meanwhile, Cyrus decides to do some regressive hypnosis with Evie to try to put her back inside that boat. The session goes well, and the clues they get set them off on another adventure, this one to Scotland where her boat arrived. The hope is that there still will be sailors or fishermen in the town where they’re headed who will remember Evie and what happened to her mother and sister.

Answers and hard truths eventually come flooding back for Evie. However, she and Cyrus will get on the radar of some dangerous men who would like for her and her story to stay buried forever. STORM CHILD is far different from what I have read previously from Michael Robotham, and the costs at stake for our protagonists never have been higher or more important. The ending is touching and extremely satisfying.