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Summary
Summary
In the wake of a devastating bombing, a father risks everything to find out who was responsible.
When Bish Ortley, a recently suspended cop, receives word that a bus carrying his daughter has been bombed, he rushes to be by her side. A suspect has already been named: a 17-year-old girl who has since disappeared from the scene. The press has now revealed that she is the youngest member of one of London's most notorious families.
Years earlier, they were implicated in an attack that left dozens dead. Has the girl decided to follow in their footsteps? To find her, Bish must earn the trust of her friends and family, including her infamous mother, now serving a life sentence in prison.
But even as he delves into the deadly bus attack that claimed five lives, the ghosts of older crimes become impossible to ignore. A gripping fusion of literary suspense and family drama, Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil is a fast-paced puzzle of a novel that will keep reader feverishly turning pages.
"More than a crime story; it's jam-packed with family drama and heartbreak. Highly recommended for suspense and mystery fans." -- Library Journal
Author Notes
Melina Marchetta was born on March 25, 1965 in Australia. She is a writer and teacher who earned a teaching degree from the Australian Catholic University. She then got a job teaching at St Mary's Cathedral College, Sydney. Her first novel, Looking for Alibrandi was released in 1992. Looking for Alibrandi swept the pool of literary awards for young adult fiction in 1993 including the coveted CBCA Children's Book of the Year Award. Her second novel, Saving Francesca was released in 2003, followed by On the Jellicoe Road in 2006. Marchetta's fourth novel, the fantasy epic Finnikin of the Rock, was released in October 2008. It has since won the 2008 Aurealis Award for best young-adult novel and the 2009 ABIA (Australian Booksellers Industry Awards) Book of the Year for Older Children. Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil (2016) is her latest book.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
At the start of YA author Marchetta's stunning adult debut, Bashir "Bish" Ortley, a cop on suspension from London's Metropolitan Police, travels to Calais, France, to see his teenage daughter after the bombing of her tour bus. Also among the survivors is 17-year-old Violette LeBrac Zidane, whose mother and grandfather allegedly conspired to blow up a British supermarket 13 years earlier. The authorities suspect the bomb on the bus was meant for Violette, but the public believes that she planted it. Either way, the Brits want Violette in their custody and out of France, so they task Bish with bringing her in. Violette runs, forcing Bish to work with the girl's family in order to find her. Emotionally complex characters complement an intricate plot rife with dizzying twists and devastating reveals. This visceral read manages to capture the emotional aftermath of a mass tragedy while sustaining tension and delivering a scathing indictment of racial profiling, vigilante justice, and the 24-hour news cycle. Agent: Jill Grinberg, Jill Grinberg Literary. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
France is again in the headlines when a bus full of British teenagers is bombed. One of the teens on board is Sabina Bee Ortley, whose father has recently been suspended from the British police. Bish Ortley is having a terrible time dealing with his divorce and his job loss, but springs out of his depression and into action, helping hunt down the lead suspect, Violette LeBrac Zidane. Zidane is another teen on the bus, but comes from two generations of bombers, causing almost everyone to think she was responsible, but the police believe Violette may have been the target. The relationships between the teens, their parents, and the police help draw the reader in and make an emotional connection, while the novel moves between different points of view and delves into themes of prejudice and dysfunctional families, and has political overtones as well. This timely thriller is the popular young adult author Marchetta's adult debut; and while her fans will easily make the transition with her, she should gain some adult readers as well.--Alesi, Stacy Copyright 2016 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
AS A WORLD-RENOWNED forensic pathologist, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the iron-willed protagonist of Patricia Cornwell's insanely popular procedural mysteries, is often called out of town for high-level professional consultations. That pattern is relaxed in CHAOS (Morrow/HarperCollins, $28.99), which finds Scarpetta at home with her husband, Benton Wesley, a criminal-intelligence agent for the F.B.I., and taking care of business as director of the Cambridge Forensic Center. Although she's hardly a lyrical writer, Cornwell allows her heroine a rare opportunity to express her affection for Boston, and especially for her favorite park along the Charles River. "I've been here many times," Scarpetta says, with some warmth, recalling hikes with Benton from their home near the Harvard campus in the "sublime" New England weather of the spring and fall. It doesn't seem fair, then, when a fresh-faced young woman with a British accent - someone Scarpetta and her husband had encountered earlier that day as she rode a bicycle through Cambridge - is found dead on the fitness path along the river. Because Boston is baking in a terrible heat wave, everything seems to be moving more slowly, so it takes half the book to set up a tent to secure the crime scene and allow Scarpetta to examine the corpse. "I'm getting more frustrated with each minute that passes," she fumes. "The body should be in the C.T. scanner. I should be setting up my autopsy station." Cornwell's readers should be able to relate to that. Not only is the autopsy a long time coming, it's less than interesting when Scarpetta finally gets around to it. Surprisingly, the young victim was zapped by a freak electrical charge - the same cause of death, it turns out, that claimed an Army general at the very same time, but hundreds of miles away. The possibility of "weaponized electricity" is the signal for the F.B.I. to step in, entering a plot that features a cyberstalker, a psycho from a previous book; Scarpetta's annoying sister, Dorothy; and Dorothy's brilliant, if seriously disturbed daughter, Lucy. Not one of them is dead and in need of an autopsy, which is a waste of Scarpetta's peculiar talents - and our time. AN ACT OF terrorism is unnerving in itself, but when this sort of violence takes the lives of children, rumblings of vigilante justice are often heard. That's the chaotic scene that greets Chief Inspector Bish Ortley in Melina Marchetta's TELL THE TRUTH, SHAME THE DEVIL (Mulholland/Little, Brown, $26) when he arrives in Calais to retrieve his daughter from a student tour of Normandy that ended abruptly when her bus was bombed and two people died. The French police are quick to suspect yet another student, Violette LeBrac Zidane, who comes from a family of terrorists. Marchetta, who has written several young adult novels, seems to have inside knowledge of the mysterious processes of the teenage brain. A busload of quarrelsome, immature adolescents doesn't daunt her in the least. Although they represent a bubbling melting pot of ethnicities, some with underlying political tensions, her young characters all stand out as individuals. Even at their most infuriating, they're always believable, if not as sympathetic as Bish Ortley, who carries a load of domestic problems on his shoulders. "There's something about him," Marchetta tells us. "The bloodshot eyes and sad teddy bear look. This man comes with a story." In HELL BAY (Minotaur, $25.99), Will Thomas puts a shrewd spin on the country house mystery by converting the traditional manor to a castle and shifting it to a remote location in the Isles of Scilly. ("The kingdom," according to legend, "where the faerie folk abandoned England, never to return.") Cyrus Barker, the series's diva detective, and his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn, who also serves as narrator, are working undercover at a high-stakes diplomatic meeting that the host, Lord Hargrave, attempts to camouflage as a house party. But on the very first night, Hargrave is shot dead by a sniper and a Sûreté agent with the French delegation is stabbed and thrown into the sea. When matters become really dire, the assembled guests decide to put on a show. ("It went rather well, considering the circumstances.") Thomas drops clever clues, and the setting is dramatic, but nothing beats the amateur entertainment organized by the guests, the murderer among them. EVERY ISLAND PARADISE has its resident eccentric. In Thomas Rydahl's first novel, THE HERMIT (Oneworld, $24.99), it's an OCtOgenarian Dane named Erhard, who has been living by himself for so long in the Canary Islands town of Puerto del Rosario that he's almost forgotten his native tongue. Erhard, who happens to be missing a finger, makes some money tuning pianos and driving a taxi. And when he comes across the mangled victim of a traffic accident, he snatches the man's detached finger for himself, a grim act that somehow "returns his balance to him." After a car is found on the beach with a dead baby in the back seat, the police bribe a young prostitute to play the troubled mother so they can close the case before the tourists get wind of it. But Erhard knows better, and he alone among his callous neighbors is determined to find the true killer. In K. E. Semmel's melancholy translation, this alienated old man proves to be a more complete human being than any of his 10-fingered friends.
Bookseller Publisher Review
Outside Calais, a bomb tears apart a bus full of international teenage students. The uninjured include British ex-Chief Inspector Bish Ortley's daughter Bee and 17-year-old Violette Zidane, the youngest member of a family involved in a horrific bombing 13 years earlier, where Bish played a devastating part in the investigation. Before Violette can be arrested-or cleared-she runs away, with another student in tow. While those in London and Calais use the bombing as an excuse to light a fire under racial tensions, Bish, despite being suspended from the force, is the one tasked to find her, realising along the way that his belief in the family's guilt may be wearing thin. Melina Marchetta doesn't shy away from the authentic emotions of her characters, her writing capturing their joy and pain as they navigate this crime through the veil of Europe's simmering anti-Muslim sentiments. Bish's investigative skills, more brains than brute force, showcase Marchetta's own talent in writing an electrifying contemporary detective thriller. This is a clear-sighted adult-fiction debut for fans of Robert Galbraith and Marchetta herself, and is likely to be devoured by older YA readers as well. Fiona Hardy is a bookseller, reviewer, writer and 2016 Text Prize finalist
Kirkus Review
A disgraced London police investigator chases a bombing case across parts of Western Europe in teen author Marchettas adult fiction debut.Bish Ortley gets a phone call telling him that a tour bus full of British kids, including his daughter, Sabina, has been bombed in France. Not knowing the circumstances, he and his mother, Saffron, drive hurriedly across the channel to find that Sabina, known as Bee, is unhurt, and the area is teeming with French police, newly arriving parents, and injured and dead teenagers. Bish had been a chief inspector with London's Metropolitan Police before being suspended from the department after 25 years on the force. (We never find out why; perhaps Marchetta is saving that information for a sequel.) But hes soon pressed into service and asked to investigate the case because hes established a rapport with the families of the dead, injured, and traumatized kids. It doesnt help matters that Violette LeBrac Zidane, whose family was convicted of a notorious supermarket bombing 13 years earlier, was on the same bus and has now disappeared after surviving the blast without injury. Marchettas smooth writing and flair for dialogue combine for a mostly seamless read, but the action runs in place for a long time while she sets up the bus bombing. With 16 characters in the first 15 pages alone, Marchetta paints a confusing picture of strange family dynamics and improbable investigative procedure against a backdrop of European racism. Many of the characters, including Bish and Saffron, are of Middle Eastern descent, and Marchetta is interested in exploring bigotry against those who have darker skin. But the hammered-home theme, coupled with a crowded roster of characters and oddly interspersed changes of viewpoints and tenses, serves only to make it hard to care about the outcome of the investigation. Convoluted and unsubtle. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Recently suspended from the London police force for misconduct, Bish Ortley gets caught in the middle of a high-stakes investigation after a bus carrying his daughter is bombed in France. The primary suspect is Violet, the teenage granddaughter of a terrorist who set off a suicide bomb in a grocery store years ago, an explosive device that Violet's mother had built. Violet is on the run, and Bish must earn the trust of her friends and notorious mother to find her. Using any means necessary, Bish gets caught up in a wild twisty chase, while dealing with his own personal demons. He must decide, is she guilty or is the killer still out there? Australian YA author Marchetta, winner of the American Library Association's 2008 Michael L. Printz Award for Jellico Road, makes her adult fiction debut with an exciting literary thriller that is full of surprises. VERDICT Along with its well-rounded and likable characters, this is more than a crime story; it's jam-packed with family drama and heartbreak. Highly recommended for suspense and mystery fans. [See Prepub Alert, 4/25/16.]-Kristen Calvert Nelson, Marion Cty. P.L. Syst., Ocala, FL © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.