Product Description

A new Logan McRae thriller from the bestselling author of Cold Granite, Dying Light and Broken Skin, set in gritty Aberdeen. Aberdeen is panicking. It's been eighteen years since Grampian Police caught the Flesher -- the notorious serial killer who butchered people all over the UK -- and seven years since he was released from Peterhead prison, his conviction overturned on appeal. But when a container full of joints of human meat turns up at Aberdeen Harbour, it kicks off the largest manhunt in Aberdeen's history. Ken Wiseman is on the run and looking for revenge. Detective Sergeant Logan McRae is lumbered with the unenviable task of babysitting Chief Constable Mark Faulds from Birmingham -- one of the original investigation team -- and trying to keep DI Insch from throwing his career away in his obsessive quest to see Wiseman behind bars before he kills again. When members of the team that put Wiseman away in 1990 start going missing, Logan knows that things aren't as straightforward as everyone thinks. More and more human meat is turning up in the food chain. Twenty years of secrets and lies are being dragged into the light.And the only thing that's certain is Aberdeen will never be the same again.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16934 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 480 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Those who like their crime thrillers diamond hard (but shot through with macabre humour) need look no further than Stuart MacBride. As Flesh House, his latest, once again proves, he has few equals in this area, and is more than worthy of the ever-growing legion of admirers he is gleaning. His tough protagonist, Logan McRae, is once again negotiating the mean streets of Aberdeen, with violence and threat forever at his elbow. Those who have read Cold Granite, Dying Light and Broken Skin will know what to expect here -- and they’ll be aware that they're not in for a comfortable ride.

The city is in a state of fear. Some 20 years ago, the Grampian police nailed a particularly vicious serial killer known as The Flesher, a monster who had claimed victims throughout the country. But one of those frequent legal appeals which so often release dangerous criminals into the community has freed him, and when a container with human body parts appears at Aberdeen harbour, it looks like the stage is once again set for carnage on a massive scale. DS Logan McRae (along with his less experienced colleague, Chief Constable Mark Faulds from Birmingham -- who was on the original team tracking down The Flesher), finds himself in charge of one of the most ambitious manhunts city has ever seen. And then members of the original team tracking down their serial killer prey (whose real name is Ken Wiseman) begin to disappear -- and more human meat is making grisly appearances. All of this is delivered with the requisite grasp of tension and characterisation that we have come to expect from Stuart MacBride. There are those who will feel he has gone too far in Flesh House in confronting the less savoury aspects of human behaviour, but fans of uncompromising crime writing will be in their element. --Barry Forshaw

Review
Praise for Stuart MacBride: 'Fierce, unflinching and shot through with the blackest of humour; this is crime fiction of the highest order by a writer whose dark star is most definitely on the rise' Mark Billingham 'If you're looking for taut narrative, gut-churning incident, strong characterisation, all shot through with savagely dark humour, then look no further' Reginald Hill 'Ferocious and funny' Val McDermid 'The novel rattles along like a bolting horse and the dialogue crackles like a firework display ! DI Steel should be declared a national treasure' Andrew Taylor, Spectator 'Grim, gritty and great fun' Daily Sport 'Riveting and gruesome' Telegraph 'This intelligent, exciting police procedural should make the leading writers of the genre start looking over their shoulders' Sunday Telegraph 'Stuart MacBride goes straight for the jugular with a tight, thrilling novel' Glasgow Herald 'Gripping' Daily Mirror 'Another brilliant, riveting police procedural. I'm green with envy!' R D Wingfield 'An impressive debut ! an edge-of-your-seat page-turner' Publishers Weekly 'A gritty, roller-coaster, in-your-face thriller' Aberdeen Press and Journal 'A cracking new writer on the crime scene who hooks you from the first page and never lets you go. The action is ferocious and the pace unrelenting' Northern Echo 'Compelling reading' Telegraph 'This is Ian Rankin on Speed ! the humour is black, the violence is apalling, the language is, well, realistic, the entertainment is unflagging. I hunger for the earlier novels ' Adelaide Review

Bloody deja vu: A generation after a prolific torturer is put away, his modus operandi resurfaces in a new string of crimes.Aberdeen Detective Sergeant Logan McRae is called to a warehouse at the docks in the middle of the night to investigate a gruesome discovery: a food freezer filled with body parts, wrapped like cuts of meat. Their counterparts may have been sold and consumed all over Scotland. Media types are already swarming the scene, and McRae's boss, normally phlegmatic Inspector Insch, is raging predictably. All the evidence seems to point to a return of Ken Wiseman, recently released from prison after serving 20 years for embarking on a sadistic crime spree. Unfortunately he's been keeping such a low profile that the police can't find him. The story fans out to multiple perspectives, including the press hounds tracking the story, a handful of police officers and Heather, a frantic victim abducted along with her husband Duncan and systematically tortured by someone she calls The Butcher. After surprising everyone by volunteering to come in for questioning, Wiseman raises the stakes by secretly capturing Insch, whose absence is met with mixed feelings by the squad. The earnest but slapdash work and infighting of McRae's colleagues, well-documented in previous outings (Bloodshot, 2007, etc.), again provides texture, humor and verisimilitude.A big, shaggy, robust procedural. The story and MacBride's writing are in vigorous, violent harmony. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Stuart MacBride has gone from asking people if they 'want fries with that' to project-managing vast IT projects for the oil industry. Somewhere in the middle he managed to make money out of dressing up as a woman. His first book, 'Cold Granite', was shortlisted for the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award and the International Thriller Writers' best debut novel and won the Barry Award for best first novel. The follow-ups, 'Dying Light' and 'Broken Skin' were both top-ten bestseller. Stuart won the 2007 CWA Dagger in the Library, awarded for a body of work. Stuart lives in north-east Scotland with his wife Fiona, cat Grendel, and a vegetable plot full of weeds.