Ritual

I loved this. It's the first Mo Hayder I've read and will be back for more. It's a deep thriller filled with suspense. There is internal conflict in the two main protagonists, Flea and Caffery, both having suffered some deep trauma in their lives. The main plotline was believable and thought provoking. A fasntastic read.

I could not believe that some readers found this book boring - I read this book over the space of two days as I literally was unable to put it down! It received two starred reviews so I advise readers to take the advice of Library Journal over those readers who gave this engrossing book negative reviews I found the subject matter of shamanism and African rituals a fascinating background to the very sad story of drug addiction, hopelessness and poverty. Mo Hayder is a brilliant writer and this book is excellent.

I've found that a number of authors that I like, seem to repeat themselves and lose my interest after five or so novels. Partly this is because of the trend toward series novels. Mo Hayder, happily, is an exception to this trend. Each of her novels are fascinating in a different way, and this one stands beside her best(to my mind "The Treatment" and "...Nanking"). One of the things I like best about her, is that she never pulls her punches the way a number of recently popular female mystery writers have started doing. I'm not sure why, but the best fiction these days seems to be coming from Britain rather than the US. "Ritual" is wonderful and completely different from her other work. I have a strong feeling that Mo Hayder will continue to be the exception in a genre that is becoming the haunt of careerist writers rather than the more talented authors.

Two characters are critical to the accelerating tempo of this compelling thriller: Sergeant "Flea" Marley of Bristol's Underwater Search Unit and DI Jack Caffrey, newly seconded to the Major Crime Investigation Unit, a man who has seen his share of agony and human depravity in his work, recently transferred from London to Bristol. This is an unlikely pair, the jaded, world-weary Caffrey and a twenty-six year old diver still angst-riddled from her parents' accidental diving death in a treacherous pool in the Kalahari Desert. Long enamored of diving, as were her parents, Flea is more at home in the water, even the murky Avon, its penetrating silence one of the few places she feels close to her mother and father. Used to recovering floaters and suicides, Flea is a bit discomfited to discover a hand- no body- just a hand and that neatly severed at the wrist. Surgically removed. When the other half of this pair is unearthed soon after, the search centers around the missing body that matches the hands. Essentially, Flea's part of the investigation is finished, but she remains fascinated by the implications of this strange discovery, her curiosity exacerbated when she learns of a possible link to the arcane practice of muti, an African method of healing through medical witchcraft using harvested body parts. Such a practice, though outrageous, is not beyond the pale in Bristol's crime and drug-infested underworld, a growing immigrant community and the drug-addicted disenfranchised that wander decaying slums blighted by opportunistic crime. When Caffrey connects the crimes to Mossy, a missing heroin addict, the detective's personal demons are awakened, delivering Jack to the shadowed places in his mind he has so far failed to escape, geographic or no. Coming together in like purpose, Flea and Jack stand on the cusp of a scenario neither of them could have imagined: "You're looking for death". Not since Dan Simmons' Carrion Comfort have I enjoyed such a compelling catalog of depraved human behavior, the evil perpetrated on the addled brains and desperate needs of society's unfortunates. Not content with the nightmarish jungle they enter in search of the missing addict, Hayden incorporates the painful internal dramas both Flea and Caffrey navigate daily, she since her parents' untimely death, he since a family tragedy in his youth. Literally two lost souls, the protagonists are drawn together in a tale that colludes with their own emotional journeys, yet promises respite from their burdens at the end of a traveling circus of horrors. Deeply creepy, Hayden inhabits this genre, the underground warrens of dissolute human behavior the perfect canvas for extraordinary depravity and exploitation. Never having read Mo Hayen until now, this novel exceeded my expectations, a tale littered with the detritus of an indifferent society bled dry by greed. There is ugliness and violence, but it is never gratuitous. Be prepared: the only way out is through nature's gro

Police diver Phobe "Flea" Marley is more at home under water, no matter how murky, than she is on dry land. Her parents were lost in a cave dive in Bushman's Hole in South Africa, they went down and never returned, so perhaps she feels closer to them when she's diving, or maybe she feels guilty, because she didn't go down with her folks that day. Someone has reported a severed hand in Bristol's floating harbor and Flea goes down looking for it and the rest of the body. There is no body and the hand is fresh. Could the victim still be alive? Not long after the second hand is found, still no body though, so DI Jack Caffrey is put in charge of the case and, like Flea, he's got problems from his past that plague him. When he was younger his brother had been taken, probable molested and murdered. Meanwhile young, drug taking, male prostitute Mossy has been captured by some very bad people. They take some of his blood to be used in an African ritual and it seems they're going to take his hands next for use in still another. Ms. Hayder effortlessly flows from not only point of view, but from point of time as well. One minute keeping us in the present with Flea and Caffrey and taking us back a couple days in the following chapter with poor Mossy, bringing us forward again, then back again, a technique that kept me riveted. I knew what was going to happen to Mossy, gruesome as it was, but was held spellbound waiting for it. Ms. Hayder's characters are as believable as any out there. She puts you in their heads, makes you feel for them. Both Flea and Caffrey are damaged goods and we care about them. That is the mark of a good storyteller, making her people real. The novel builds toward a climax that I didn't see coming and I was well fooled as to who the bad guy was. I was so sure I was onto it, so sure I had the ending pegged, then the book took a twist I didn't see coming. A first rate police thriller this is. A real edge of your seat nail-biter. A pulse-racing thriller of the first order. I can't praise this book highly enough.