The White Crow by Michael Robotham

Published by Scribner on July 1, 2025

American crime novels that tell stories from the perspective of a police-affiliated character (detective or beat cop, coroner, forensic investigator) tend to be less interesting than their British counterparts. American characters are too often self-righteous, annoyingly so when they deliver predictable lectures about how nobody else cares about victims as much as they care. British characters are more self-effacing, while British authors tend to focus on good storytelling rather than tedious lectures about their advocacy for crime victims.

The apparent victims in The White Crow are a jeweler and his family. Masked men force Russell Kemp-Lowe into his house just as he’s arriving home. They tie up Caitlin, his wife, before making off with Russell. One of the robbers is kind enough to tuck their daughter into bed when she wakes up and wonders about the masked strangers in her kitchen. The robbers leave a man behind to watch Caitlin. They tell Russell that the man will kill Caitlin if Russell doesn’t let them into his jewelry store and shut off the alarms. When the robbers leave the store, they tie Russell to a chair with a bomb that will explode if he moves.

Philomena McCarthy is a police constable. She’s driving with her partner when she sees a little girl in pajamas near the road. Just as they stop to investigate, they are called to the scene of the jewelry store robbery. Phil’s partner responds but Phil stays behind to search for the girl. The little girl is, naturally enough, the child of Russell and Caitlyn.

The girl, Daisy, tells Phil that her mother has a bag over her head and won’t wake up. Daisy leads Phil to her home, where Phil discovers Caitlyn’s dead body, still tied to the chair. While it quickly becomes apparent that Caitlyn was suffocated, there is no bag over her head when Phil arrives.

Philomena isn’t a detective but she worms her way into the investigation because she’s formed a rapport with Daisy. Surveillance cameras reveal that Phil’s father and uncles have some sort of connection to Russell. Phil becomes a suspect because her father is a semi-retired criminal who now operates a construction company. Philomena is the “white crow” of the family (the Bulgarian equivalent of “black sheep”), a misfit who doesn’t conform to her family’s lawlessness.

The White Crow is fundamentally a whodunit. Someone killed Caitlyn, but the robbers left the home before Daisy. The murderer must have removed the bag from Caitlyn’s head after Daisy left and before she returned with Phil. It isn’t clear why one of the robbers would have done so. Who committed the foul deed?

Michael Robotham offers an array of suspects for Philomena and the reader to consider. Russell was having serious money issues and might have benefitted from his wife’s insurance. Philomena’s father is having money issues of his own, thanks to a gang of Bulgarian criminals who want to take over his construction business so they can use it to launder their criminal proceeds.

The notion of a cop turned suspect — a cop who then goes rogue to prove his or her innocence — is a frequent plot driver in police thrillers, but Robotham can be forgiven for borrowing that familiar device. The rest of the story seems fresh.

Robotham builds depth into Philomena’s character through her troubled relationship with her father. While it is common for fictional (and real) cops to have troubled relationships with spouses, Robotham avoids the “I’m married to my job” cliché. Phil’s strong relationship with her firefighter husband becomes central to the story when bad guys kidnap her as the story approaches its climax.

The scenes following the kidnapping move at a frenzied pace, justifying the novel’s “thriller” label. While the story ends with exciting action, The White Crow isn’t a typical action novel, filled with shootouts and fistfights. Phil occasionally demonstrates her ability to defend herself, but the novel sustains interest by blending detection with suspense.

The killer’s identity, revealed in the final pages, might not come as a shock, but it isn’t such a foregone conclusion that the reader will be tempted to skip to the end before moving on to another book. Like many British crime novels, The White Crow avoids most crime novel clichés while placing complex characters into an engaging (and sometimes exciting) story.

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