Product Description

Just after lunch on a Tuesday in April, nine feet under water, police diver Flea Marley closes her gloved fingers around a human hand. The fact that there's 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 - lead them into the darkest recesses 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 ...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #49069 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 416 pages

Amazon.co.uk
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

LONDON LITE, 4 March 2008
'There's something almost feral about her fiction compared with other British crime writers. She may be foxy but she's also bloody scary'

DAILY MIRROR, 7 March 2008
Expect plenty of blood, gore and black magic'

Customer Reviews

Mo Hayder Ritual - Quite simply boring!!
I purchased "Ritual" in hardback a week ago and have struggled to get half way through this book. Compared to "Birdman" and "The Treatment" (which were both hard to put down - great stuff!) ... this is a big dissapointment. The plot and characters lack depth and I am afraid I won't be finishing the book. If you want to pick up a bargain check eBay in a few days!!

Mo Hayder - Ritual
With Ritual, the first of a new series whose links are yet to become clear, Hayder firmly cements her reputation as Britain's finest contemporary crime writer, and certainly the most daring. Fans seem to be split between favouring her two Jack Caffery novels (of which this is a slight continuation), and her two excellent standalones, so given that Ritual is a kind of blend of both, I'm curious about what the overall reception has been or will be.

After reports of a body being sighted, police diver "Flea" Marley uncovers a severed human hand from the bottom of Bristol docks. Searches turn up no body. But, the following day a second hand is uncovered, previously buried beneath the entrance to a restaurant and now fallen into a drain. Investigations suggest that the person from whom they came was alive at the time of removal. This is all disturbing enough, but for reports of a small priapic black man hanging around the restaurant and diving silkily into the waters. And there's fear around.

Newly seconded to the Major Crime Investigation Unit of the City, DI Jack Caffery is charged with looking into the discovery. Fresh from his disastrous personal life in London, Jack is still haunted by the disappearance of his brother Ewan when both were children. It's a ghost that leads him to seek out, when free from the case, the Walking Man, an ex prisoner charged with a horrific crime of vengeance who now spends his days walking the roads of the nearby countryside, sleeping in the shelter of verges and in fields, with only his few possessions and thoughts for company. Jack seems to hope this man will give him some insight into his life, into his anger and desire for revenge.

Flea is not without her own troubles. Just as compelling as Jack (and therefore I am not one bit disappointed that Caffery shares the book with such a fellow rounded, fascinating character), Flea is a bit of a mess, still reeling from her own parents death in a sinister accident in Africa, for which she shares a great burden of guilt with her brother. She is instinctive, impulsive, dangerously curious, as much driven to investigate the horrific things she suspects might lurk behind the case as she is to investigate the hidden corners of her father's life. And when Jack starts to take her disturbing instincts about the case seriously, the two are set to be mired in a horrific quarter of the Bristol underworld, where human life is cheap and ancient beliefs still hold sway.

And then there's Mossy, a young heroin addict who agrees to do something strange but innocuous in return for a fix, but ends up locked in a cell, with only the presence of a sinister black man called Skinny for company. And soon Mossy will be fighting for his life.

I enjoyed every moment of this. Every last word. There's not been a book I have been looking forward to so much this year, and every moment of anticipation proved worth it. As so often, it's hard to say why you have such incredibly positive reactions to a book, but in my experience it mostly happens when everything about it - the plot, the characters, the back-story, the writing, the setting, the atmosphere etc. - just absolutely fits. I adore Hayder's style, her "voice" (though I hate the term), is enchanting, and is so appealing to me that I couldn't put the book down. She has the great suspense writers' way (like Ruth Rendell), of keeping shadows in every corner so you never know what's there, what's lurking, if anything at all. She knows exactly what to hold back and what to reveal, and when to do it. And there's a LOT of material here that needs dealing with, teasing out to us: The present case, Flea's back-story, Flea's current personal life, Jack's back-story, the sinister figures who populate the story, and the mysterious "Walking Man" (who is based on a real-life character and after whom the series is named). And Hayder handles it all with such skill, moving the story at perfect pace.

There are several prominent features to this book. The strength of the characters is one, the strange pull of the back-story is another, and the atmosphere is the third. And possibly the one I relished most. Ritual is a sinister, unnerving book. It's a strange comparison I'm about to make, but Hayder's skill with quirky fits of the imagination is similar to Fred Vargas. The nature of the quirks is different (Vargas' are lighter, more off the wall, and Hayder's are more imbued with darkness and menace), but the similarity in style is still there, and it's why the books are so intriguing, because the atmosphere is so unusual and compelling. Imagination is the key, the key to making the reader either shiver or think "whoa, that's something new", and Hayder's is sharper than most other writers'. Hints at the supernatural, too, help make things constantly fresh and hidden from the reader, and maintain the sinister, disturbing cast of the plot.

Marley and Caffery are brilliant, Flea in particular. Caffery we know from before (and if anyone is unsatisfied that Hayder doesn't touch on his issues re: Ewan too much, please do bear in mind that this is a series of five books and there's quite a way still to go!!), but Flea is entirely new, and, though damaged, it's a pleasure to be shown her. She really is just as compelling, complex and realised as Caffery, and I'm sure could carry a book of her own.

Ritual is a complete triumph. Certainly the best British crime novel I've read so far this year. We are treated to some nice twists and turns, and one masterly piece of misdirection by the time the book reaches its satisfying end. I recommend it completely, as much as I recommend all her previous work. Her talent really is quite special.

An anti-climax from the first chapter
I'm a Mo Hayder fan. I pre-ordered RITUAL many months before its release, partly because it features front-man DI Jack Caffery, but mainly because the previous novel (THE TREATMENT) ended with a masterful piece of writing that left the reader knowing a crucial piece of information that was unknown to the fictitious detective. I'm sure thousands of readers of that story could hardly wait to see how it was carried over to this, the third in the series. And we've been waiting for seven years, no less.

It would be cruel to so much as provide a hint as to what happens next in that deeply personal element of the life of Jack Caffery, so I won't. I will say however that what we are given doesn't altogether make sense, and in some ways this is not the Caffery we had grown to admire and care for. First of all, he shares the lead with an entirely new character: 29-year-old police diver Phoebe 'Flea' Marley, who bears the weight of vaguely similar family agonies to those of Caffery - in her case it's her parents, in his it's his brother. Both assume some sense of responsibility for their loved ones' fates, and in Caffery's case he somewhat mysteriously seeks guidance from an enigmatic and some might say surreal character known only as The Walking Man. Flea's character, while slightly one-dimensional in her obsession for finding answers to her parents' demise, is nevertheless well drawn and interesting. Caffery on the other hand seems to be rather a different animal to the one we thought we knew, and in some ways he has lost our trust. Well, mine anyway. I gained the impression that certain aspects of this story might have been influenced by the author's publishers, who presumably agreed to finance this 'new' series apparently built around The Walking Man. That's the weak link for me; if this is to be a new series then the characters should be all new. There's a degree of confusion in the inclusion of Jack Caffery when perhaps an entirely new character in his place might have made more sense, leaving the opportunity for Hayder to write a more logical and natural follow-up to the previous Caffery novel.

As it is, it's quite good but not in the same league as the first two Caffery outings. It revolves around yet another dark and repellent topic just as Hayder normally does, but a lot of the passion is missing. If anything, we rely on the new character of Flea Marley for much of the emotional appeal, because Caffery this time round comes over as less complex and merely a hardened and uncompromising copper. For me this was an anti-climax and not at all what I had hoped for, but it's far from bad. I just hope that in future Mo Hayder lets her heart rule her head and allow the passion to rule over the business of writing crime fiction.