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Title: Ritual

Author: Mo Hayder

Narrator: Andrew Wincott

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-16-08

Publisher: ISIS Audio Books

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 26 votes

Genres: Mysteries & Thrillers, Modern Detective

Publisher's Summary:

In the pitch dark, nine feet under water, police diver Flea Marley closes her gloved fingers around a human hand. The fact that there's no body attached is disturbing enough. Yet more disturbing is the discovery, a day later, of the matching hand - indications suggest that the victim was still alive when they were removed. Flea and DI Jack Caffery soon establish that the hands belong to a boy who has recently disappeared. Their search for him - and for his abductor - lead them into the darkest recesses of Bristol's underworld, where drug addiction is rife, where street-kids sell themselves for a hit, and where an ancient evil lurks.

©2008 Mo Hayder; (P)2008 Isis Publishing Ltd

Critic Reviews:

"Hayder ... is at least Thomas Harris' equal." (Daily Telegraph)

"Hayder's fifth novel is full of the trademarks that made her name: expertly deployed shock tactics, excellent research, a cast of physically, mentally or morally damaged characters, and two sympathetic protagonists with painful past lives." (Guardian)

"Intensely enthralling stuff, but I'm glad I'm only inhabiting Hayder's mind at a reader's remove." (Observer)

Members Reviews:

A dark psychological thriller

Police diver Phoebe 'Flea' Marley discovers a human hand in a Bristol harbour. DI Jack Caffrey, newly moved to Bristol from London, responds to Flea's suggestion that the case deserves more than a cursory handling. A second hand is soon found and when they learn that the person to whom the hands belonged was probably alive when they were severed the investigation moves into overdrive. This is not your standard police procedural. It's far more concerned with the psychological elements of crime and the things that motivate all the players. Flea and Jack both have personal demons that influence their behaviour and the kind of officers they are. The story too is a complex one with many concurrent themes the strongest of which is that almost all the characters have some element of their past that haunts or troubles them in their current lives. But Hayder explores other issues too including the way people deal, or don't deal, with being transplanted from their own culture and the role that family bonds play at all layers of society. She also looks at an urban drug culture and the industry that thrives on exploiting the vulnerable within that culture. Funnily enough, the one element of the book that I struggled with was the inclusion of the more traditional crime fiction elements, like the fairly obvious false trails and red herrings, which I didn't think were handled quite as well as the psychological elements of the book. I've not read any of the Jack Caffrey books before so I don't know how this compares to others but I was certainly captivated by this story. If you imagine TRAINSPOTTING meets MCCALLUM you might get a sense of this world and the fact I was an hour late for work this morning is the best evidence I have that it's an utterly gripping read.

Brilliant

What made the experience of listening to Ritual the most enjoyable?

Andrew Wincott's narration made it a pleasure to listen.