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RITUAL
by Mo Hayder
Atlantic Monthly Press, September 2008
416 pages
$22.00
ISBN: 0871139928


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Mo Hayder's novel is the tortured story of several characters who are trying to carry on after a severe loss; in some cases the loss is more literal than it is in others. Phoebe "Flea" Marley is a police officer and diver working for the Bristol police department facing her own personal demons. Her parents died in a diving accident in Africa and she has yet to come to terms with it. She dives England's Bristol Harbor picking up dead bodies inside the murky waters, but nothing has as much impact on her as a pair of severed hands found tied below a dock. There is no body. The police investigation leads to a possibility that the severed hands are part of an African muthi ritual, an outlawed practice where body parts are taken from living individuals in order to repel demons. Flea has her own demons to exorcise and part of the process will involve trying to solve the case, but she must also learn what happened to her parents.

RITUAL is almost wholly dark in tone, with few light moments to relieve the gloom. The story is seen through three different points of view and at different times of the story. There is Flea's story, the story of the owner of the severed hands, and that of police inspector Jack Caffery (last seen in TREATMENT), who is also going through his own inner turmoil in his own particular way.

Hayder's novel is not for the faint-hearted or the easily offended. The book only scratches the surface of the heart of darkness of some of these characters including the perpetrators of the crime. It is a gripping book and one that is not easily forgotten. RITUAL is a powerful and suspenseful novel that should not be disregarded easily.

Reviewed by Angel L. Soto, September 2008

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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