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“Ritual by Mo Hayder (Book Review)
Ritual by Mo Hayder is the first novel in her new Walking Man Series. It is a paperback published by Bantam Press and its ISBN is 0553820435. From the author who brought us The Birdman, Skin and The Treatment like the others it is a graphically scary novel not for the faint hearted. While I enjoyed it I felt it was not her best book. To be fair it is the first book in a new series and new characters and scenes are been introduced. This will be a good series. A severed hand is found in Bristol waters and the other hand is found buried under a restaurant. It is believed that the person may be alive. The hands belong to Mossy, a missing drug addict. Mo introduces us to African rituals and folklore but that is not the main story it is a straight forward crime novel. For a female she writes very graphically gruesome scenes and is a major crime thriller writer I look forward to the next in this series. Here is an extract of the book: “Just after lunch on pontoon tanks, then dump a little air from her suit so she was stabilized enough to get to the bottom and take a little time to feel the object.It was pitch dark down there, like having her face in mud, no point in trying to see what she was holding. With most river and harbour diving everything had to be done by touch, so she had to be patient, allow the thing to feed its shape from her fingers up her arm, download an image in her mind. She palpated it gently, closing her eyes, counting the fingers to reassure herself it was human, then worked out which digit was which: the ring finger first, bent away from her, and from that she could figure out which way the hand was lying – palm upward. Her thoughts RITUAL raced, as she tried to picture how the body would be – on its side probably. She gave the hand an experimental tug. Instead of there being a weight behind it, it floated free of the silt, coming away easily. At the place where a wrist should be there was just raw bone and gristle”. This book was reviewed by Annette Dunlea author of Always and Forever and The Honey Trap.
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