Gone by Mo Hayder

Mystery

In book 5 of the Detective Jack Caffery/Flea Marley, there's a carjacker on the loose. In the car, there was a little girl and the girl is still missing. Was the criminal after the car or the kid?

Flea is still struggling over covering for her brother killing his girlfriend and her whole team is getting tired of her attitude. Vowing that she's going to change, this case is her first in new mind set. Flea is convinced that the kidnapped girl is in an abandoned tunnel, putting herself and her team in danger. Past books have discussed more the way that Flea's dive team works and how they find clues hidden in the depths of water. There was less of that this book. It was more about Flea's emotional state and trying to bring herself back to normality. I hope next book we get back to more of how she works, but it worked well in this book.

Caffery, on the other hand, has very little character development, which is ok. He's trying to chase down this carjacker/kidnapper and realizes that the criminal may be closer than expected.

I don't mind the Caffery series, but I think Hayder is at her best with some of the more perverse mysteries like Pig Island.

First Line: "Detective Inspector Jack Caffery of Bristol's Major Crime Investigation Unit spent ten minutes in the centre of Frome looking at the crime scene."

Rating:
(3.5/5)

Skin by Mo Hayder

Skin by Mo Hayder
Mystery

DI Jack Caffery and police diver Flea Marley are back to help solve another mystery. Skin takes place less than a week after Hayder's previous Caffery/Marley book Ritual. The two characters are still trying to get over the disturbing things they saw at their last crime scene when they are called to find the missing wife of a celebrity. While Marley does a dive to try and find her body, Caffery gets sidetracked with a suicide that just doesn't feel right. After following up with the medical examiner, Caffery starts treating the case as a murder but questions whether it has anything to do with the case Marley and he were working on earlier in the week.

After not finding the celebrities' wife in the grotto, Marley heads home and is forced to deal with her brother's mess after a drinking and driving incident. There's a real question of right vs wrong and how far Marley can push her moral boundary. I got quickly wrapped up in Marley's story, which I found to move much quicker than the case Caffery was working on.

True to Hayder style, this book was a page turner. While Hayder usually writes stories that make your skin crawl, Skin was tamer than usual and would appeal to a wider audience.

There was a two book phase where Caffery became really weird and I wasn't sure if I liked him anymore or not but he seemed to be back on track this novel. He's a smart guy and isn't the typical 'do-gooder' that other fictional detectives are. Caffery has his flaws and grapples with his history constantly.

All of the previous Caffery novels I've found could stand alone, but the reader would benefit from having read Ritual before reading Skin. The case from Ritual is mentioned and some of the suspects from that case make re-appearances in this novel.

As always, I'm looking forward to Hayder's next novel!

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First Line: "Human skin is an organ."

Rating:
(4.5/5)

The Treatment by Mo Hayder

The Treatment by Mo Hayder
Mystery

The Treatment is essentially the next book in a series of, hopefully, many books following DI Jack Caffery (the first book being Birdman). This time, Jack is out to catch a killer that holds a family up in their house, chained to radiators, as he sodomizes the children in the family. The families aren't given any water, and the females are kept away, being labeled as a "hazard". Unfortunately, this case reminds Caffery of a case he was personally involved in when his brother, Ewan, was abducted as a child, never to be found again. We learned about Penderecki in Birdman, and we learn even more about him in this book.
As much as I enjoy Caffery as a character, I have found that Birdman and The Treatment are Hayder's weaker works. Not that they are bad by any measure. Really, I'm comparing the likes of Pig Island (a 10/10 book for me), and Tokyo (either a 9 or 10/10 book). Hayder is still an awesome author, and these books are great, they just aren't her best. When I read a Hayder, I expect to never see the ending coming. In this book, however, I could figure out who the murderer was and while there were a few surprises, this was a little disappointing. I was also alarmed at how quickly Jack found the name of the murderer after one small little clue. Maybe I didn't understand it correctly, but it seemed that they went through so much, then all the sudden this name pops out of thing air.
I can't remember if I liked Becky (Jack's girlfriend) in the Birdman, but this left me feeling like she was cold. Granted, she had been through a lot. I tried to give her a break but I really couldn't, and found that she wasn't a likable character.
Given how the book ended, there HAS to be another Caffery novel coming out and I'm looking forwards to it!!

Rating:

(4/5)