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Books : Fiction : Contemporary Fiction: 1970 Onwards : Authors A-Z : H : Hayder, Mo
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When it comes to crime novels designed to chill the blood in their unblinking treatment of the darkest recesses of human behaviour, Mo Hayder is unquestionably in the forefront of British practitioners in the field. What is even more striking is the fact that more than any other female writer, she is moving comfortably in the bloody territory that has long been the traditional prerogative of male writers, and never for a second allows her writing to be any less disturbing than that of her male confrères.Ritual is par for a course where this writer is concerned: a tough, scarifying novel, delivered with maximum narrative rigour. A police diver discovers a severed human hand in Bristol's floating harbour. Shortly afterwards, another hand -- from the same victim -- is found buried underneath a restaurant. The severed hands are those of a young heroin addict who has recently gone missing from the Bristol drugs scene. A police diver, Flea Marley, finds herself joining forces with DI Jack Caffrey, recently seconded to the Major Crime Investigation unit. Jack is attempting to come to terms with the murder of his brother, but finds himself more than occupied with the details of the death of Mossy, the young heroin addict. It appears that the latter has become embroiled in a sinister black market trade stemming from Africa, where the value of human life is held at less than nothing. Jack and Flea form an uneasy alliance, tackling together a world steeped in the most appalling torture and abuse of human life. Those who have read the powerful predecessors to this novel (such as Birdman and The Treatment) will know what to expect. Mo Hayder is always reliable in delivering riveting (if deeply uncomfortable) reads. --Barry Forshaw
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Tokyo is another of Mo Hayder's deliciously chilling criminal outings, but probably won't produce the frisson of disapproval that such novels as Birdman and The Treatment did. The days are gone when Hayder was identified as one of a cadre of women writers who did something totally unacceptable: produce grisly crime novels quite as unsettling as the products of male imagination. People seem to have finally accepted that the tough crime novel needn't be an exclusively male preserve.Her troubled female protagonist in Tokyo is Grey, haunting the thronging streets of Tokyo in search of an elusive piece of film recording the infamous Nanking massacre of 1937. But did the film ever exist? The past is a touchy subject for Grey, with incidents in her own life that she has not yet come to terms with. She ill-advisedly becomes a hostess in a nightclub where the clientele is a tad unsavoury (another example of Hayder utilising real-life crime for her plots, with the echoes of a recent murder case). And Grey finds a lead to her quest: a taciturn survivor of the massacre who is now an academic, with no time for the woman pestering him. But Grey makes progress with him--until she encounters a powerful Godfather figure and his violent associates, with a clandestine source for his well-being a much sought-after elixir. Soon, Grey's life becomes two things: very complicated and a place of considerable danger.
The change of locale for Mo Hayder here has ensured that the imaginative energy of her earlier books is consolidated, as is the rejection of the now hackneyed serial killer plot. Atmosphere is brilliantly sustained, set pieces are pulse-racing, and (most satisfying of all) Grey is a truly complex and damaged heroine, the perfect conduit for the reader through this dark world. --Barry Forshaw
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When it comes to crime novels designed to chill the blood in their unblinking treatment of the darkest recesses of human behaviour, Mo Hayder is unquestionably in the forefront of British practitioners in the field. What is even more striking is the fact that more than any other female writer, she is moving comfortably in the bloody territory that has long been the traditional prerogative of male writers, and never for a second allows her writing to be any less disturbing than that of her male confrères.Ritual is par for a course where this writer is concerned: a tough, scarifying novel, delivered with maximum narrative rigour. A police diver discovers a severed human hand in Bristol's floating harbour. Shortly afterwards, another hand -- from the same victim -- is found buried underneath a restaurant. The severed hands are those of a young heroin addict who has recently gone missing from the Bristol drugs scene. A police diver, Flea Marley, finds herself joining forces with DI Jack Caffrey, recently seconded to the Major Crime Investigation unit. Jack is attempting to come to terms with the murder of his brother, but finds himself more than occupied with the details of the death of Mossy, the young heroin addict. It appears that the latter has become embroiled in a sinister black market trade stemming from Africa, where the value of human life is held at less than nothing. Jack and Flea form an uneasy alliance, tackling together a world steeped in the most appalling torture and abuse of human life. Those who have read the powerful predecessors to this novel (such as Birdman and The Treatment) will know what to expect. Mo Hayder is always reliable in delivering riveting (if deeply uncomfortable) reads. --Barry Forshaw
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This crackling psychological thriller introduces police detective Jack Caffery, on the hunt for a serial killer nicknamed "The Millennium Ripper" by the British tabloids after the bodies of five prostitutes are unearthed beneath the rubble of a Greenwich landfill. All the victims were raped and their bodies horrendously mutilated--but not until after they were killed by a dose of heroin injected directly into the brain stem. What stuns Caffery even more than the post-mortem savagery is the one detail of the murders the public doesn't know; the hearts of the women were replaced with birds that were still alive when they were sewn into the victims' chests. Caffery himself is a tortured man, still burdened by guilt over the decades- old murder of his younger brother and frustrated because he cannot bring the man he knows to have been responsible to the bar of justice. When the Millennium Ripper confesses to the prostitute killings just before taking his own life, Caffery faces his own limitations and begins to make peace with his past. But then another prostitute is found dead, her body savaged in the same way, a bird where her heart was, and Caffery realises that his past may never truly be put to rest. A solid page turner, this gripping debut by a young Englishwoman introduces a complex and fascinating protagonist destined for another appearance. Meanwhile, Birdman will enthral readers who just can't get enough of Hannibal Lechter. -- Patrick O'Kelley
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Sometimes things are far worse than you can possibly imagine. Mo Hayder's second novel The Treatment takes us further into the heart of psychological darkness than we expect to go. Someone broke into the Peaches' house and left a husband and wife chained to radiators to die of thirst and starvation, taking their young son off to an even worse fate. Inspector Jack Caffery lost his own brother to abduction and murder, which makes his hunt for the killer perhaps rather too personal. Caffery is in a dysfunctional relationship with the equally disturbed sculptor Rebecca, who survived with him through the events of Hayder's Birdman; the edginess this gives him makes him at once a brilliant investigator of an insane crime and a danger to all around him. And the killer has already struck again--another family are chained up in their home, awaiting the worst atrocity of all...This is a compellingly dark thriller--Hayder's sense of South London as an overlapping patchwork of social worlds is particularly strong and she makes an ordinary place like Brockwell Park a site of deep unease. Hayder's imaginative intensity makes her book a powerful nightmare, but works just as well when describing Caffery's eventual healing. --Roz Kaveney
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Tokyo is another of Mo Hayder's deliciously chilling criminal outings, but probably won't produce the frisson of disapproval that such novels as Birdman and The Treatment did. The days are gone when Hayder was identified as one of a cadre of women writers who did something totally unacceptable: produce grisly crime novels quite as unsettling as the products of male imagination. People seem to have finally accepted that the tough crime novel needn't be an exclusively male preserve.Her troubled female protagonist in Tokyo is Grey, haunting the thronging streets of Tokyo in search of an elusive piece of film recording the infamous Nanking massacre of 1937. But did the film ever exist? The past is a touchy subject for Grey, with incidents in her own life that she has not yet come to terms with. She ill-advisedly becomes a hostess in a nightclub where the clientele is a tad unsavoury (another example of Hayder utilising real-life crime for her plots, with the echoes of a recent murder case). And Grey finds a lead to her quest: a taciturn survivor of the massacre who is now an academic, with no time for the woman pestering him. But Grey makes progress with him--until she encounters a powerful Godfather figure and his violent associates, with a clandestine source for his well-being a much sought-after elixir. Soon, Grey's life becomes two things: very complicated and a place of considerable danger.
The change of locale for Mo Hayder here has ensured that the imaginative energy of her earlier books is consolidated, as is the rejection of the now hackneyed serial killer plot. Atmosphere is brilliantly sustained, set pieces are pulse-racing, and (most satisfying of all) Grey is a truly complex and damaged heroine, the perfect conduit for the reader through this dark world. --Barry Forshaw
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This crackling psychological thriller introduces police detective Jack Caffery, on the hunt for a serial killer nicknamed "The Millennium Ripper" by the British tabloids after the bodies of five prostitutes are unearthed beneath the rubble of a Greenwich landfill. All the victims were raped and their bodies horrendously mutilated--but not until after they were killed by a dose of heroin injected directly into the brain stem. What stuns Caffery even more than the post-mortem savagery is the one detail of the murders the public doesn't know; the hearts of the women were replaced with birds that were still alive when they were sewn into the victims' chests. Caffery himself is a tortured man, still burdened by guilt over the decades- old murder of his younger brother and frustrated because he cannot bring the man he knows to have been responsible to the bar of justice. When the Millennium Ripper confesses to the prostitute killings just before taking his own life, Caffery faces his own limitations and begins to make peace with his past. But then another prostitute is found dead, her body savaged in the same way, a bird where her heart was, and Caffery realises that his past may never truly be put to rest. A solid page turner, this gripping debut by a young Englishwoman introduces a complex and fascinating protagonist destined for another appearance. Meanwhile, Birdman will enthral readers who just can't get enough of Hannibal Lechter. -- Patrick O'Kelley
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When it comes to crime novels designed to chill the blood in their unblinking treatment of the darkest recesses of human behaviour, Mo Hayder is unquestionably in the forefront of British practitioners in the field. What is even more striking is the fact that more than any other female writer, she is moving comfortably in the bloody territory that has long been the traditional prerogative of male writers, and never for a second allows her writing to be any less disturbing than that of her male confrères.Ritual is par for a course where this writer is concerned: a tough, scarifying novel, delivered with maximum narrative rigour. A police diver discovers a severed human hand in Bristol's floating harbour. Shortly afterwards, another hand -- from the same victim -- is found buried underneath a restaurant. The severed hands are those of a young heroin addict who has recently gone missing from the Bristol drugs scene. A police diver, Flea Marley, finds herself joining forces with DI Jack Caffrey, recently seconded to the Major Crime Investigation unit. Jack is attempting to come to terms with the murder of his brother, but finds himself more than occupied with the details of the death of Mossy, the young heroin addict. It appears that the latter has become embroiled in a sinister black market trade stemming from Africa, where the value of human life is held at less than nothing. Jack and Flea form an uneasy alliance, tackling together a world steeped in the most appalling torture and abuse of human life. Those who have read the powerful predecessors to this novel (such as Birdman and The Treatment) will know what to expect. Mo Hayder is always reliable in delivering riveting (if deeply uncomfortable) reads. --Barry Forshaw
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Sometimes things are far worse than you can possibly imagine. Mo Hayder's second novel The Treatment takes us further into the heart of psychological darkness than we expect to go. Someone broke into the Peaches' house and left a husband and wife chained to radiators to die of thirst and starvation, taking their young son off to an even worse fate. Inspector Jack Caffery lost his own brother to abduction and murder, which makes his hunt for the killer perhaps rather too personal. Caffery is in a dysfunctional relationship with the equally disturbed sculptor Rebecca, who survived with him through the events of Hayder's Birdman; the edginess this gives him makes him at once a brilliant investigator of an insane crime and a danger to all around him. And the killer has already struck again--another family are chained up in their home, awaiting the worst atrocity of all...This is a compellingly dark thriller--Hayder's sense of South London as an overlapping patchwork of social worlds is particularly strong and she makes an ordinary place like Brockwell Park a site of deep unease. Hayder's imaginative intensity makes her book a powerful nightmare, but works just as well when describing Caffery's eventual healing. --Roz Kaveney
-
-
Tokyo is another of Mo Hayder's deliciously chilling criminal outings, but probably won't produce the frisson of disapproval that such novels as Birdman and The Treatment did. The days are gone when Hayder was identified as one of a cadre of women writers who did something totally unacceptable: produce grisly crime novels quite as unsettling as the products of male imagination. People seem to have finally accepted that the tough crime novel needn't be an exclusively male preserve.Her troubled female protagonist in Tokyo is Grey, haunting the thronging streets of Tokyo in search of an elusive piece of film recording the infamous Nanking massacre of 1937. But did the film ever exist? The past is a touchy subject for Grey, with incidents in her own life that she has not yet come to terms with. She ill-advisedly becomes a hostess in a nightclub where the clientele is a tad unsavoury (another example of Hayder utilising real-life crime for her plots, with the echoes of a recent murder case). And Grey finds a lead to her quest: a taciturn survivor of the massacre who is now an academic, with no time for the woman pestering him. But Grey makes progress with him--until she encounters a powerful Godfather figure and his violent associates, with a clandestine source for his well-being a much sought-after elixir. Soon, Grey's life becomes two things: very complicated and a place of considerable danger.
The change of locale for Mo Hayder here has ensured that the imaginative energy of her earlier books is consolidated, as is the rejection of the now hackneyed serial killer plot. Atmosphere is brilliantly sustained, set pieces are pulse-racing, and (most satisfying of all) Grey is a truly complex and damaged heroine, the perfect conduit for the reader through this dark world. --Barry Forshaw
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