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Ritual

Jack Caffery, 3

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Ritual

By: Mo Hayder
Narrated by: Colin Mace
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Fans of Stephen King, Stuart MacBride and Karin Slaughter will devour this dark and disturbing thriller from bestselling and prize-winning author Mo Hayder. Expertly weaving ancient rites with modern forensics, it draws you in and paints a picture so vivid and compelling in the mind, you'll be hooked from the start...

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 ...

'Intensely enthralling' Observer©2008 Mo Hayder (P)2026 W.F. Howes Ltd. Crime Thrillers Mystery Police Procedurals Suspense Thriller & Suspense
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It drifted along so slowly (12hrs at that), and then suddenly wrapped up quickly. There was too much methodical detail that I wasn't interested in. It just kept slowing it down really. And as for the mythical/magical, element, too much and too repetitive for my liking

Too much self loathing and guilt

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I am only few chapters in and already I don't want it to end

love love it

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a warm smooth blanket of disturbed writing! it combines redemption and terror in a surprising mix.

lovely local detail

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The first in the series was quite good but the second found us with a new senior officer who hadn't been explained but just appeared.

This one follows on from that but only in the sense that the story is completely disjointed, we have virtually no reference until much further in to his previous situation and have no resolution of an outstanding piece of investigation at the end of book 2.

Moreover, the story in this one involves random characters who don't seem to gel pieces of dialogue that simply don't hang true and behaviors that seem at best very unlikely.

I gave it about five hours and then got totally bored. I won't be buying the next ones.

Disjointed, vagueand much poorer than the first two in the series

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