Mo Hayder - Skin

When the decomposing body of a young woman is found near railway tracks just outside Bristol one hot May morning, all indications are that she's committed suicide. That's how the police want it too: all neatly squared and tidied away.

But DI jack Caffery is not so sure. He is on the trail of someone predatory, someone who hides in the shadows and can slip into houses unseen. And for the first time in a very long while, he feels scared.

Police diver Flea Marley is working alongside Caffery. Having come to terms with the loss of her parents, and with the traumas of her past safely behind her, she's beginning to wonder whether their relationship could go beyond the professional.

And then she finds something that changes everything. Not only is it far too close to home for comfort - but it's so horrifying that she knows nothing will ever be the same again.

And that this time, no one - not even Caffery - can help her...

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Skin basically has two plots.
While the whole police force is on the search of a footballers vanished wife Detective Inspector Jack Caffery's thoughts are with his last case and the so called "Tokoloshe" who hasn't been caught (quod vide Ritual, March 2008) but he's soon distracted by an alleged suicide whom he believes was staged. His investigations lead him into a house of horror filled with glass jars of human skin.

Meanwhile Sergeant Flea Marley, head of the diver unit, has some very different problems. She's been followed by a decaying smell for days until she discovers a very dead body in the trunk of her car which was just lend by her brother Thom. Thom admits it was an accident and that her freaks but soon together with his girlfriend turns against Flea, threatening her to go to the police and blame it on her.

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In the beginning I wasn't at all enthusiastic to discover the Muti killings from Hayder's last novel. I wasn't especially excited than and Wasn't now. But as soon as Caffrey turn away from the whole Tokoloshe topic the story took a turn to the better and got interesting. Hayder has an excellent talent to merge two completely different stories with each other without leaving open ends that don't make sense for a continuation.

Now that Jack and Flea both have their dark secrets one might be curious how the series unfolds in the future. One thing is for certain, I want the Tokoloshe to go away.

Rating:
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Export UK ed edition
Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Bantam Press; Export UK ed edition (26 Mar 2009)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0593048229
ISBN-13: 978-0593048221

US edition
Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Grove Press (January 1, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0802119301
ISBN-13: 978-0802119308

Mo Hayder - Ritual

Just after lunch on a Tuesday in April, nine feet underwater, police diver Flea Marley closes her gloved fingers around a human hand.

The fact that there is no body attached is disturbing enough. Yet more disturbing is the discovery, a day later, of the matching hand. Both have been recently amputated, and the indications are that the victim was still alive when they were removed.

DI Jack Caffery has been newly seconded to the Major Crime Investigation Unit in Bristol. He and Flea soon establish that the hands belong to a boy who has recently disappeared.

Their search for him - and for his abductor - leads them into the darkest recess of Bristol's underworld, where drug addiction is rife, where street-kids sell themselves for a hit, and where an ancient evil lurks: an evil that feeds off the blood - and flesh - of others...

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So this is the third DI Caffery novel and it did not hold what has been promised. I read Birdman and The Treatment and personally consider the latter one of the most gripping and shocking books I've ever read in this genre. However, Ritual doesn't hold up to the first two books.

Surprisingly I couldn't get into it. The story is based on Muti killings, which are occasions of murder and mutilation associated with some traditional cultural practices, in Southern Africa. More correctly known as medicine murder are not human sacrifice in a religious sense, but rather involve the murder of someone in order to excise body parts for incorporation as ingredients into medicine and concoctions used in witchcraft.
Hayder made the protagonists characters quite insignificant and halfhearted which is sad. Caffrey had a complicated character before but this time he seems to be just inanimate. Still suffering and stuck in feelings of revenge for his lost brother he's still some sort of searching for him and seems to be lost.

Flea's in a similar situation, having lost her parents in a diving accident, they both find a connection to each other which isn't really significant to the plot or deeper mentioned.

However, Hayder got a bit back to her former writing through switching to the poor boys suffering before and after loosing his hands. The descriptions is intense, similar to those in The Treatment but far away from being that graphic and hurting.

All in all I am not happy with the whole story. I caught myself putting the book to the side in the midst of the ending where the book should have been at it's highlight, just to play a cheap game on my laptop.

Rating:
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UK edition:
Hardcover: 416 pages
Publisher: Bantam Press (10 Mar 2008)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0593056418
ISBN-13: 978-0593056417

US edition:
Hardcover: 416 pages
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press (September 15, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0871139928
ISBN-13: 978-0871139924