Thought provoking and fast paced with a believable strong female lead character. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Twisty and compelling. Loved the way her past keeps dragging her back and the way she fights so hard against giving in to her family.
Never sussed out the final twist.

This is the second book in the series about Philomena (McCarthy). She is a police constable in the Met and is quite recently married. There's a sense in which she really shouldn't be in the police as her father and uncles are notorious London gangsters…. The book starts in the early hours of the morning with Phil on a "breakfast run" for colleagues. A bike runs a red light and is clipped by her police car. The cyclist appears unhurt and rapidly leaves the scene. Phil thinks she saw a young child by the side of the road and stays behind when her colleague leaves on a shout. The shout is for a robbery at Hatton Gardens where the jeweller has been held hostage and has been left apparently wearing bomb linked to a tilt switch! Phil finds the child who says that she can't wake her mother.

It makes for a decent start to this book. Inevitably the two strands link up (and fairly quickly too). The police investigating the robbery suspect that the McCarthy family may be involved although initially they are not aware of her connection. DCI Keegan is the lead investigator on this story. He's new from the previous book and I found myself liking him (and sympathising with him!). I liked Phil last time and my view on her has certainly not changed. In general all the characters play their parts pretty well. As this is a detectives investigation story you get the usual twists and turns with red herrings around too. The pace in this is very good indeed. It really kept me reading. The credibility of parts of the story were less good but that is the case so often with this type of story.

In the end Robotham writes well. I guess I prefer the O'Loughlin series however I enjoyed the first book in this series and I'd probably say that I found this one a little better. This is a tense pacey read that any Robotham fan will be interested in reading (though start with book 1 to get some background). It should appeal to crime fiction lovers generally. I do like the rationale behind the title too! Probably 5.4/5 I think.

I love this book!! Philomena is a fantastic character. The first novel she shows up is one of my favourites so I quickly jumped on the chance to read this book.
In this story, we see the lines blur beween Phil's job and her mob boss father, which devastating results.

10/10

Philomena McCarthy is a police officer with a secret -- her dad is a known criminal, whose enterprises walk a fine line between dodgy entrepreneurial spirit and outright organised crime. So far, she's managed to keep her two worlds seperate, but when her father is implicated as the mastermind behind a jewellery heist that sees a woman murdered, her husband tied to a bomb and their young daughter traumatised, Phil struggles to keep those lines as clear as she once did.

As the officer who found the young girl wandering in her pyjamas, and was first on the scene to discover the wife's corpse, she feels obligated to untangle the mystery. But then the connections to her father become clearer, and soon she finds herself facing not just internal pressures from the force, but also the attention of a particularly vicious gangster.

Robotham's darkly complex procedural manages to take seemingly disparate moving parts and combine them into something ingeniously complex and surprisingly moving as he examines the trauma that families with secrets can create within children of any age. The scenes with Daisy -- the young girl -- as she tries to explain what she experienced can be deeply moving, but Robotham balances them with gentle moments of comic relief that arise quite naturally from his well-sketched characters.

I have always felt that Robotham -- a natural storyteller with a keen eye for commercial pacing and strong central themes -- has been a little under the radar in terms of reach, and I hope The White Crow, with its strong London setting, its cast of morally compromised characters, and its strong pacing, manages to break through to an even wider audience. It certainly deserves to -- I have always loved Robotham's writing, and would love to see him become even more recognised as a master of the commercial crime novel.

A convoluted story of several criminal acts with numerous threads , an abundance of potential criminals , and no motive or clues. A robbery taking place during the night from an upmarket jewellery shop results in numerous police rushing to the scene: two police called to the premises see a very young child wondering alone. One of the young inexperienced detectives chooses to act on instinct and track and protect the child unaware of any potential link to the robbery. Her background , inexperience and criminal family ties do little to engender her to senior officers and a large number of her colleagues. Investigation does little to deliver answers and pressure is exerted to find obvious culprits around which a successful criminal case can be built. A slow painstaking investigation by an honest old school detective is thwarted at every step by his superior officer intent on a quick fix and open shut case. The slow collation of facts, circumstances , evidence and potential masterminds orchestrating the crime builds up to a frenetic and frenzied conclusion that questions the ability to deliver justice or to satisfy with a white wash without honesty to a gullible public. Many thanks to author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

The White Crow by Michael Robotham is book 2 in the DC Philomena McCarthy series. It is published on 8 July. Thank you to Little Brown Book Group, Netgalley and the author for the advance copy to read and review. Philomena, or Phil, has an interesting background with her father, Edward, being a London crime boss and her 3 uncles also in the family business. She was estranged from him for quite a few years, but they have come to an agreement not to discuss their work with each other. Phil is on night duty and discovers a 6 year old child, Daisy, hiding in a hedge. On taking her home, she finds evidence of a violent home invasion. At the same time, a jeweller’s has been burgled and the owner tied up and fitted with a bomb. Phil has wanted to be a policewoman since she was 11 years old and is very passionate about her work. She gets very involved, sometimes too involved, in the cases and this one is no exception. The tension is always there throughout the story, and ramps up quite substantially towards the end, and kept me glued to the page. I loved the unexpected directions taken as this complex case unfolds. This can be read as a standalone, but you would get more out of it if you started from book 1, When You Are Mine.

Great book, good read. I loved the main character and really enjoyed seeing how the story unfolded. A few surprises along the way. Definitely recommend this book. Would be a great holiday read.

I’ve been a fan of Michael Robotham’s for years, binge reading the Joe O’Loughlin series, all the standalones, then reading every new title as soon as possible.

Philomena McCarthy first starred in When You Were Mine, Robotham loved writing her character so much she had to get a series.

The White Crow starts with a bang, a call to an armed robbery at a jewellers, a small child wandering the streets and a dead body. There’s plenty going on throughout, including accusations against Philomena, and a very hostile takeover aimed at her dad’s family business.

It does a lot of things very well, crime, characters and multiple original plot lines. Faster than the Cyrus Haven novels, more action than Joe O’Loughlin.

Recommended, I know Robotham fans will love this book.

Thanks to Netgalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK

The white crow - Grips like a vice and twists like a rollercoaster. Impossibly clever. Impossible to put down!
It was really hard for me to put this book away. I pulled an all-nighter to finish reading it. The numerous plots and suspense left me, chapter by chapter I read with bated breath!