β Scribed by Mo Hayder
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Starred Review. At the start of Hayder's superb third crime novel to feature Det. Insp. Jack Caffery (after The Treatment), Sgt. Phoebe Flea Marley, a police diver, retrieves a severed hand from Bristol harbor. Without a corpse, the investigation stalls, until fingerprints identify the hand as belonging to Ian Mossy Mallows, a known heroin junkie. While Caffery pursues the drug angle, Flea uncovers a possible connection to muti, a brand of African witchcraft and traditional medicine that incorporates body parts into its rituals. Digging deeper, Caffery and Flea discover that Mallows may still be alive and the men responsible may be using muti as a cover for even darker purposes. Meanwhile, Flea mourns the accidental death of her parents two years earlier while they were diving in a remote pool in Africa's Kalahari desert. Hayder vividly evokes torture and drug abuse, but the violence is never gratuitous. Readers looking for visceral thrills need look no further than this gritty English series. (Sept.)
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Starred Review Once again Hayderauthor of such acclaimed crime novels asThe Treatment (2001), The Devil of Nanking (2005), and Pig Island (2007)masterfully exploresthe horrific boundaries of culture and evil. The setting is Bristol, England, where police diving expert Flea Marley is called in to investigate after a human hand is found in the Avon river. The discovery links Flea with burned-out detective Jack Cafferythe lead in both Birdman (1999), Hayders first novel, and The Treatmentand sets the pair on a journey into Englands heroin subculture. Followinga trail that becomes darker with every turn, they move relentlessly toward a confrontation with practitioners of muthi, a form of African witchcraft that uses human body parts for healing and spell-casting rituals. Hayder has long been a master at blending crime and horror genres, but this time she outdoes herself, flip-flopping the supernatural and the explainable like a cycle of poison and antidote that will remain with the reader long after the final page. Superviolent, but for those with strong stomachs, completely gripping. --Elliott Swanson
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