Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings

It's Friday . . . time to share book excerpts with:

• Book Beginnings on Fridays hosted by Rose City Reader, where bloggers share the first sentence or more of a current read, as well as initial thoughts about the sentence(s), impressions of the book, or anything else that the opening inspires.  
• The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice, where you grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an ebook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Today I'm featuring The Suspect by Michael Robotham.  The excerpts shared are from the trade paperback version I borrowed from the library.

 

Beginning:  From the pitched slate roof of the Royal Marsden Hospital, if you look between the chimney pots and TV aerials, you see more chimney pots and TV aerials.  It's like that scene from Mary Poppins where all the chimneysweeps dance across the rooftops twirling their brooms.

From up here I can just see the dome of the Royal Albert Hall.  On a clear day I could probably see all the way to Hampstead Heath, although I doubt if the air in London ever gets that clear.

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Page 56:  "I'm not interested in the minutiae of how she died.  Instead I look for clues that relate to her life."

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My thoughts:  This book combines two of my favorite elements:  a favorite setting (in this case London) and the first installment in a new-to-me series.  I also like the author's observations about London.

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From barnesandnoble.com:  Renowned psychologist Joseph O'Loughlin has it all—a thriving practice, a devoted, beautiful, fiercely intelligent wife, and a lovely young daughter. But when he's diagnosed with Parkinson's, O'Loughlin begins to dread the way his exceptional mind has been shackled to a failing body, and the cracks in his perfect existence start to show.  

At first, O'Loughlin is delighted to be called in to a high-profile murder investigation, hoping his extraordinary abilities at perception will help bring a killer to justice. But when O'Loughlin recognizes the victim as one of his former patients, an emotionally disturbed young woman who nearly brought ruin upon him, O'Loughlin hesitates-a fateful decision that soon places O'Loughlin at the top of the lists of both a bullish detective, and a diabolical killer.

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This Friday Focus post was originally written and/or compiled and published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com.  It cannot be republished without attribution.  Retweeting and sharing of this original post on Google+ are appreciated.