Birthdays for the Dead

by Stuart MacBride

Overview

Twelve years. Twelve dead girls. Thirteen will be unlucky for some. The Number One bestselling crime thriller from the award-winning Stuart MacBride. A bloody, brilliant and brutal story of murder, kidnap and revenge.

Detective Constable Ash Henderson has a dark secret…

Five years ago his daughter, Rebecca, went missing on the eve of her thirteenth birthday. A year later the first card arrived: home-made, with a Polaroid picture stuck to the front – Rebecca, strapped to a chair, gagged and terrified. Every year another card: each one worse than the last.

The tabloids call him ‘The Birthday Boy’. He’s been snatching girls for twelve years, always just before their thirteenth birthday, killing them slowly, then torturing their families with his homemade cards.

But Ash hasn’t told anyone what really happened to Rebecca – they all think she ran away – because if anyone finds out, he’ll be taken off the investigation. And he’s sacrificed too much to give up before his daughter’s murderer gets what he deserves…

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780007344192
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	01/05/2012
Sold by:	HarperCollins Publishers
Format:	eBook
Pages:	512
Sales rank:	555,915
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Stuart MacBride is the No.1 bestselling author of the DS Logan McRae series. His novels have won him the CWA Dagger in the Library, the Barry Award for Best Debut Novel, and Best Breakthrough Author at the ITV3 crime thriller awards. Stuart’s other works include Halfhead, a near-future thriller, Sawbones, a novella aimed at adult emergent readers, and several short stories. He lives in the north-east of Scotland with his wife, Fiona, and cat, Grendel.

Stuart MacBride is the Sunday Times No. 1 bestselling author of the Logan McRae and Ash Henderson novels. His work has won several prizes and in 2015 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Dundee University.

Stuart lives in the north-east of Scotland with his wife Fiona, cats Grendel, Onion and Beetroot, and other assorted animals.

Editorial Reviews

A cop’s horrifying personal connection with a serial killer puts a chilling spin on MacBride’s solid stand-alone. Det. Constable Ash Henderson, of Oldcastle, Scotland, is on the police team investigating “the Birthday Boy,” who for the last 12 years has abducted 12-year-old girls. Each year on their birthdays, the psychopath sends their parents Polaroids of them being tortured to death. Ash’s daughter, Rebecca, was taken five years before, but to stay on the case he has hidden this fact, a secret that drives him into gambling debts with the local mob and away from his ex-wife, Michelle, and his other daughter, Katie, who both blame Rebecca for running away. Teamed with quirky forensic psychologist Alice McDonald, Ash is shaken after some of the bodies are found, just as another girl disappears. MacBride delves into revenge and grief while adding a strong emotional wallop and avoiding the clichés of the serial killer genre. Agent: Philip Patterson, Marjacq Scripts. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Birthdays for the Dead:

‘MacBride is a damned fine writer – no one does dark and gritty like him’ Peter James

‘The master of murderous mayhem is back to his best with a belter of a book … a page-turner’ The Sun

Praise for Stuart MacBride:

‘Fierce, unflinching and shot through with the blackest of humour; this is crime fiction of the highest order’ Mark Billingham

‘Ferocious and funny, this is Tartan Noir at its best’ Val McDermid

‘Stuart MacBride’s thrillers just keep getting better’ Express

From the Publisher

For the past 12 years girls have been disappearing on the eves of their 13th birthdays. Most are considered runaways until a year later when their parents receive a homemade birthday card featuring a photo of their daughters being tortured. A card arrives each year thereafter, showing progressively worse torture until a final picture shows a dead girl. When the victims' bodies are found in a park in Oldcastle, psychologist Alice Macdonald is brought in to create a profile of the killer. DC Ash Henderson is assigned to work with her, but he withholds key information from her despite his desperation to find the killer for very personal reasons of his own. VERDICT Scottish crime novelist MacBride's (Cold Granite; Flesh House) latest thriller is pure MacBride: well written, entertaining, dark, and violent. It's sure to appeal to fans of gritty Scottish thrillers by Denise Mina and Ian Rankin.—Lisa O'Hara, Univ. of Manitoba Libs., Winnepeg

Library Journal

Vengeance compels a Scottish detective to find a brutal serial killer and to protect a dark secret. Constable Ash Henderson has received another anonymous birthday card addressed to his daughter Rebecca, who went missing five years ago shortly before her 13th birthday. Inside is a photo of his Rebecca, bound and gagged. Several other families receive the same annual torture, apparently sent by a killer who's still at large. Ash had spread the myth, even among police colleagues, that Rebecca ran away from home. Though the cards have continued to arrive on schedule, the killer the media has dubbed "The Birthday Boy" has not been active lately. So, when someone stumbles upon the remains of a young woman during a sewer repair, Henderson's heart beats a little faster. Unfortunately, he is teamed with the chirpy and optimistic Dr. Alice McDonald, whose voice and manner affect him like the screech of chalk on a blackboard. After she convinces the family of the unearthed victim to go public, reinvigorating the case, pressure mounts on Henderson as police search for other bodies in the same location. More victims mean more families to interview in the twisty investigation. Could there be a worse time for a perv named Ethan Baxter to resurface and harass Henderson's surviving daughter, Katie? Stopping him seems the only thing Henderson and ex-wife Michelle can agree on. Henderson's gritty first-person perspective adds authority and tension to a complex police procedural in which MacBride (Dark Blood, 2011, etc.) captures both the tumult and the telling details of a busy squad room.

Kirkus Reviews