Book Review--Shiny Water, by Anna Salter

Anna's Salter's books are rather addictive to me. They just really sweep you along. Shiny Water is the first in a series featuring Dr. Michael Stone, a forensic psychologist (female, despite the man's name). I've actually read all of her books before, but I enjoy rereading them.

This book is about a nasty custody case. Michael is asked to testify because one of the children, aged six, told a teacher that his father was sexually abusing him and his younger sister. The children confirm this in Michael's office. Oddly, though their mother thinks her soon-to-be-ex is a horrible person, she does not believe that the children were sexually abused. She has some problems with paranoia (big problems, actually), and thinks that their father coached the children to say this, that the court would decide it wasn't true, blame the mother for encouraging her children to make up stories about their father, and award custody to the father. Michael is very experienced in sexual abuse cases and believes that the children really were molested, and says as much in court. However, the mother's fears about what the judge would think about the charges of sexual abuse turned out to be accurate, and Michael's testimony was ignored. The father was given full custody, the mother limited visitation.

But then the children are found murdered in their beds when visiting their mother, who is arrested for the crime. Though she knows that the children's mother has mental health problems, she doesn't believe for a second that she murdered her children. She embarks on her own personal quest to find the real killer. It is a quest that may threaten her life, as the killer is much closer than she expected, and someone she never suspected.

Anyway, this book wouldn't appeal to some people, since the subject matter is pretty upsetting. But I love Michael's determination to do what she can to right a wrong. Obviously whatever she does won't bring the children back to life, but she can at least help bring their real killer to justice, even if it's at great cost to herself.