Praise for Mo Hayder
“The very best thing a writer can do is to thoroughly and completely immerse the reader in a strange new world. Mo Hayder does it to perfection”—Michael Connelly
"Mo has a profound ability to shock and surprise her readers… She's the bravest writer I know"—Karin Slaughter, author of Broken
“I stand in awe of Mo Hayder's incomparable gifts as a storyteller.”—Tess Gerritsen, author of the Rizzoli & Isles thrillers
“The elaborate shock effects that define Hayder’s savage style ultimately serve their purpose in a novel that taps into the current fascination with all things supernatural and questions our assumptions about a number of subjects, from faith healing to cultish religious groups and society’s definition of evil.” ––Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
“Hayder shows herself to be a maestro of the sinister.”— New York Daily News
Praise for Gone
“Artfully constructed….Chilling….Shocks are in store.”—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
“Riveting . . . Hayder keeps the tension high. . . . The meticulously crafted plot is heightened by Hayder’s skillful evocation of mood as she summons the specter of a highly intelligent criminal who is taking great satisfaction from every parent’s worst nightmare. A captivating thriller.”— Booklist (starred review)
“Hayder writes some of the most carefully plotted, gripping and downright scary books in the mystery genre, and Gone continues that tradition in fine form.”—Bruce Tierney, Bookpage
“Mo Hayder’s gritty, intense thriller series featuring detectives Jack Caffery and Flea Marley is a must for anyone who likes breakneck timing and detectives who walk on the dark side.”—Carol Schneck, The Daily News
“A brilliantly plotted mystery that keeps you guessing not only who the villain is, but what exactly he's after . . . First-rate mystery that takes full advantage of the wintry, moonlit West Country and the unusual skills of its lady diver.”— Kirkus Reviews
“A carjacking goes from bad to horrifying in Hayder’s gripping fifth thriller….Hayder expertly brings to life the claustrophobia of Flea’s dives and the emotional burden of the case on Jack.” –Publishers Weekly
“With her latest, Gone, Mo Hayder takes you to the edge, then pushes you over in a heart-pounding rush of a story that will leave you battered and bruised, and wanting more.” —Chevy Stevens, New York Times bestselling author of Still Missing
“Gone, [Hayder’s] latest novel published in America, is one of those books that dares you to put it down once you’ve started reading and then challenges you to forget it once you have finished…. The only way you can read Gone without having every nerve in your body jumping and screaming is if you are not paying attention. …. Hayder is a storyteller par excellence…[who] continues to drop charges into the water until practically the last paragraph. If you have read her previous works, you know what I’m talking about. If you’re new to her craftsmanship, read Gone and be enthralled. Strongly recommended.” —Joe Hartlaub, Bookreporter.com
“Twisty, fast-moving and often creepy …While Hayder does a bang-up job larding her page-turning plot with blind alleys and unexpected curves, it is her in-depth character portrayals, especially of the mothers of the missing girls, that give the novel its depth and complexity.”—Debra Ginsberg, Shelf Awareness (online)
“The reader is kept rapt for more or less the first half of the book just by the mystery of the identity of the hijacker, and what he may have done to the child [shudder]. Then there is a sudden shift in intensity, as the plot takes unexpected and quite startling twists and turns, and from that point on I could not put the book down till its conclusion, breath held a good part of the way there.”— Murder by Type (online)
“I deduced that this was yet another suspense story about vanished children. If it's possible for a subject to be, at once, horrifying and humdrum, this is the one…But when I started reading, I discovered that the thing I was most dreading - that hoary plot - turned out to be the novel's greatest pleasure…It's a tribute to Hayder's powers as a suspense writer that she completely turns the over-familiar premise of this novel inside out and upside down. The more pages of Gone that we captivated readers turn, the farther away we get from cliched thriller conventions.”—Maureen Corrigan, The Washington Post
“Hayder keeps getting better…This is an incredibly gripping story that makes one snatch any opportunity to read even a page or two and to stay up late to reach the satisfying conclusion.” —Joe Strebel, Anderson’s Bookshop, Naperville, IL
“Gone is a classic tension-filled thriller, elevated by Hayder’s characterization and her facility with description …The final pages bring surprising revelations and the story ends with a shocking bang.”—Leslie Doran, Mystery Science Magazine
“Where she differs from her peers is her almost outlandish imagination. Hayder pushes the boundaries of what’s been said and written before… Brilliantly perceptive portrayals of the victims and very clever, sympathetic plotting, not to mention an acute capturing of police procedure - Gone is Mo Hayder’s most compulsive thriller yet.” —Daily Mirror (UK)
“Anyone who enjoys intelligent, well-crafted plots and efficient, glowing writing will enjoy Mo Hayder. This is the fifth book in the Jack Caffery series and could well be the best. Mo Hayder raises the bar high when it comes to crime fiction and she’s done it again with this clever, stomach-churning, fast-paced, top-notch thriller.”
—Sunday Express (UK)
“Hayder, again, proves expert at ratcheting up the tension.” —Irish Independent
“She jolted the often-sedate world of police-procedural fiction with an unabashed readiness to gaze at the Gorgon of human behaviour; and detail it while pulling no punches” —The Independent (UK)
“Mo Hayder’s speciality, from her bleak and brilliant debut Birdman on, has been a particularly potent blend of terror and horror to create a suspense that not only grips her readers by the scruff of the neck but takes a firm hold on their intestines, too.”— The Times (UK)
“Her latest thriller serves up a fast-paced storyline that will see you racing through the pages.”— The Edinburgh Evening News
“They call her the ‘queen of hardcore in high heels.’ The beautiful and terrifying Mo Hayder, since The Devil of Nanking, has honed her sense of narrative and sculpted her obsession with evil….[In Gone,] she delivers a message unsettling to all: the whole world, yes, anyone can be prey.” –Le Point Magazine (France)
Praise for SKIN:
“[A] chilling thriller . . . Hayder captures the claustrophobia of Flea's dives in unsettling detail and continues to build on her two damaged heroes.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“[A] high-octane thriller . . . Hayder's grasp of . . . forensic detail . . . rivals P.D. James'. . . . Hayder has created conscientious and valiant figures in Marley and Caffery, whose disturbing human failings have the paradoxical effect of making readers trust and root for them. Nice work once again from one of the most dependable pros in the murder business.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Hayder fans expect an adrenalin-pumping plot with a high gruesome quotient and complex characters that don't just flirt with evil, they sometimes embrace it. Skin doesn't disappoint.” —Carole E. Barrowman, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
"Hayder is not a subdued writer. Her characters are almost as chilling as the horrors that they are investigating… Macabre, yes, but also absorbing and hugely entertaining." –The Times (UK)
In addition to the creepy intellectual satisfactions of Hayder's plot, the setting here is agreeably terrifying…It's a tribute to Hayder's powers as a suspense writer that she completely turns the over-familiar premise of this novel inside out and upside down. The more pages of Gone that we captivated readers turn, the farther away we get from cliched thriller conventions.
—The Washington Post
…[an] artfully constructed procedural…the visceral thrills don't come at the expense of character. By giving her villain the intelligence to inflict as much emotional as physical pain, Hayder makes him less of a monster and more of a terror.
—The New York Times
A carjacking goes from bad to horrifying in Hayder's gripping fifth thriller featuring Bristol Det. Insp. Jack Caffery and Sgt. Phoebe "Flea" Marley (after Skin). When Rose Bradley's car is stolen with her 11-year-old daughter, Martha, inside, it appears to be a routine snatch-and-grab. It becomes clear, however, that the carjacker had his sights set on the girl, not the vehicle, when he begins taunting the police, who scramble to find clues to Martha's whereabouts. Jack soon discovers a pattern of similar kidnappings disguised as car thefts, with the level of violence ratcheted up in each case. As Jack tracks the kidnapper above ground, Flea's search takes her below ground and underwater into a decommissioned canal and tunnel, where she fights to save her own life and that of the kidnapped child. Hayder expertly brings to life the claustrophobia of Flea's dives and the emotional burden of the case on Jack. (Feb.)
Jack Caffery and Sgt. Phoebe "Flea" Marley, a police diver, return in Hayder's latest thriller. This is the fifth appearance for Caffery, who debuted in Birdman, and the third for Marley. The events of the previous novel, Skin, have eroded their personal and professional relationship, and Marley and her team are under scrutiny. A new case brings them together, and the two struggle with their partnership and with the brutal criminal they face. What appears to be an accidental kidnapping during a carjacking turns more sinister when the child is not released, a pattern of similar attempted incidents emerges, and they receive a letter from the kidnapper outlining what he's done and what he's planning. VERDICT Readers who can tolerate some graphic descriptions of violence (or skim past them) will be rewarded with a complex, fast-paced, well-written mystery with interesting characters fighting personal and external demons. Recommended for those who enjoy Karin Slaughter and John Connolly.—Beth Blakesley, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman
A carjacker in a clown's mask drives off with an 11-year-old girl in the back seat, drawing DI Jack Caffery of Bristol's major-crime unit into a multilayered plot that also brings back unsteady female police diver Flea Marley.
Hayder's fifth novel to feature Caffery (introduced in Birdman, 1999) tones down the gruesome violence (if not the creepy scenarios), delivering a brilliantly plotted mystery that keeps you guessing not only who the villain is, but what exactly he's after. With his poorly disguised antipathy toward children, Caffery is not the best choice to investigate the disappearance of little girls. But the former Londoner, who's still losing sleep over his brother's childhood disappearance, is comfortable on the missing-person trail. Helped by his unhinged but brilliant street friend, the Walking Man, he is led to a canal with a submerged barge and an odd network of air shafts. That's where Marley (introduced in Ritual, 2008) is on her own mission to make up for a traumatic past—not to mention a recent criminal act in taking responsibility for the death of a woman her drunken brother ran over. The complicated personal history of Caffery and Marley provides a compelling undercurrent, as does Marley's confessed love-hate affair with Caffery and his checkered past. She does something most mystery writers wouldn't with their star protagonist: She has him miss major clues and get outsmarted by the mother of a missing girl. But only, of course, to a point.
First-rate mystery that takes full advantage of the wintry, moonlit West Country and the unusual skills of its lady diver.
