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57th out of 418 books
—
565 voters
Ritual (Jack Caffery #3)
by
Mo Hayder
Just after lunch on a Tuesday in April, nine feet underwater, 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. Both have been recently amputated, and the indications are that the victim was still alive when they were re...more
The fact that there's no body attached is disturbing enough. Yet more disturbing is the discovery, a day later, of the matching hand. Both have been recently amputated, and the indications are that the victim was still alive when they were re...more
Paperback, 415 pages
Published
March 10th 2008
by Random house
(first published 2008)
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Nachdem es in London nichts mehr gab, was ihn halten konnte, versucht Detective Inspector Jack Caffery sein Glück ab sofort in Bristol. Und gleich sein erster Fall dort führt ihn mit Polizeitaucherin Flea Marley zusammen. Die nämlich hat eine menschliche Hand im Hafenbecken von Bristol gefunden und benötigt nun Cafferys Hilfe, den – vermutlich toten – Besitzer der Hand zu finden.
Kurz darauf findet sich eine weitere Hand ganz in der Nähe des ersten Fundortes, die zur ersten Hand gehört. Und dann...more
Kurz darauf findet sich eine weitere Hand ganz in der Nähe des ersten Fundortes, die zur ersten Hand gehört. Und dann...more
A pair of detached hands turns up in a Bristol harbor. The son of a policeman goes missing. We are introduced to a new character, “Flea” (Phoebe) Marley, a diver and sergeant in the Bristol police force, who feels more comfortable with life underwater than above. We also meet the Walking Man, an ex-convict who is now rich but decides to live homeless, but who mysteriously and miraculously has all these insights into Caffery’s psyche. And we have the return of Jack Caffery, who has transferred fr...more
Phoebe "Flea" Marley has been a police diver for years. She's used to recovering gruesome cadavers from beneath the water's surface. During a recent dive, Flea discovers not one, but two human hands, but she is unable to locate the body. Forensic evidence links the hands to Ian Mallows, also known as Mossy. And it looks like the hands were removed while Mossy was still alive.
Flea begins to investigate Mossy's background, and learns that he is a troubled heroin addict, and was desperate for anyt...more
Flea begins to investigate Mossy's background, and learns that he is a troubled heroin addict, and was desperate for anyt...more
I was first fascinated with Hayder’s character Jack Caffery in Birdman. Like Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor (must be something with the name Jack), Caffery is flawed by past hauntings, the kidnap and murder of his brother 30 years ago. In RITUAL he has moved to Bristol and a case involving African occult practices teams him with Flea Marley, a police diver with hauntings of her own, the death of her parents two years ago in a diving accident. Fate has brought these two together even if they don’t reali...more
Mo Hayder's return to the Jack Caffery series is a mixed bag. Definitely not on par with the hyper-gory Birdman or the disturbing The Treatment, it relocates Caffery to Bristol where along with a new soon-to-be recurring series character, police diver Flea Marley, he investigates the discovery of a severed human hand in the harbour.
The key problem is, the plot which is interesting though hardly outstanding hardly needs Caffery, who could have been substituted by any Detective. Marley's own bagg...more
The key problem is, the plot which is interesting though hardly outstanding hardly needs Caffery, who could have been substituted by any Detective. Marley's own bagg...more
Set in England, african mutilation killings....hum. dark creepy, don't suspect who at the end....dark dark dark.
If you are new to Mo Hayder, then I wouldn't recommend starting with this book. Start with The Treatment where we are first introduced to damaged detective Jack Caffery. This is a stand-alone, but I think you'll enjoy it more with more background on the characters.
In this installment, Caffery has left London for Bristol and catches a case involving cut-off hands and head of the police dive team, Phoebe "Flea" Marley. She has some serious issues of her own and is surrounded by some very dark peo...more
In this installment, Caffery has left London for Bristol and catches a case involving cut-off hands and head of the police dive team, Phoebe "Flea" Marley. She has some serious issues of her own and is surrounded by some very dark peo...more
This is a thriller that involves 'muti', religious practices from various African countries that involve body parts, in this case human and detached from said human while still alive. Not as terrifying as you might imagine (the book, that is); I have a fairly low horror threshold and I was OK most of the time.
I kept getting annoyed in this book because various characters kept referring to others as 'African' or to muti as 'African'. All the 'African' characters were sinister. Flea, one of the ma...more
I kept getting annoyed in this book because various characters kept referring to others as 'African' or to muti as 'African'. All the 'African' characters were sinister. Flea, one of the ma...more
I had high hopes for this book as it continues the character in the author's first 2 books (Birdman and The Treatment) which are some of my favorite all time reads.
This one started off well but the second half was not as compelling and it left me feeling frustrated re the lack of storyline to explain the details of the events between this book and the previous one.
As in the previous books the main character (DCI Jack Caffrey) has his own things going on which make a subplot to the current crime...more
This one started off well but the second half was not as compelling and it left me feeling frustrated re the lack of storyline to explain the details of the events between this book and the previous one.
As in the previous books the main character (DCI Jack Caffrey) has his own things going on which make a subplot to the current crime...more
I've read quite a few Mo Hayder books and been delighted with all of them but was a little less delighted with this one as I felt it wasn't concluded well enough.
There were aspects of the story left unanswered for me and this was a bit disappointing. Also I felt the characters, Caffery and Flea, were too self absorbed at times and their diversions from the overall story, delving into their inner demons, was getting a little tiring. I feel the Walking man doesn't really ring true as a character h...more
There were aspects of the story left unanswered for me and this was a bit disappointing. Also I felt the characters, Caffery and Flea, were too self absorbed at times and their diversions from the overall story, delving into their inner demons, was getting a little tiring. I feel the Walking man doesn't really ring true as a character h...more
While I enjoyed this one (I might generously round it up to 3.5 stars), it comes across as a transitional novel. In an afterword, Hayder admits that after The Treatment, the second of her Jack Caffery mystery novels, she had grown tired of her protagonist. So in Ritual it makes sense that Caffery, while ostensibly the main character, shares the spotlight with a new character, Phoebe "Flea" Marley, a police diver forced upon him by the circumstances of the book's grisly case. As with her first tw...more
4.0 out of 5 stars - I left this series when Jack could not find his brother. I hated how the author left Ewan and I thought I'd never read any other books about the DI from London. Finally got the latest 3 and decided to read them all in a row.
Jack has now moved to Somerset and works for the Major Crimes Unit there when a very odd case comes in. A severed hand is found, and soon its mate. Someone may be dabbling in unusual African rituals making their own sick kind of magic. There seems to be s...more
Jack has now moved to Somerset and works for the Major Crimes Unit there when a very odd case comes in. A severed hand is found, and soon its mate. Someone may be dabbling in unusual African rituals making their own sick kind of magic. There seems to be s...more
Hörbuch-Rezension:
Mo Hayder ist eine britische Krimiautorin mit interessantem Lebenslauf (nachzulesen hier bei krimi-couch.de), die nach einer längeren Pause mit Ritualmord ihre Serie um den Ermittler Jack Caffery fortsetzt. Die ersten beiden Bände, Der Vogelmann (1999) und Die Behandlung (2000), waren beide recht erfolgreich und erhielten gute Kritiken. Zu dem Hörbuch brachte mich mein Lieblingsvorleser Dietmar Bär. So richtig warm geworden bin ich mit den Protagonisten Jack Caffery und der Pol...more
Mo Hayder ist eine britische Krimiautorin mit interessantem Lebenslauf (nachzulesen hier bei krimi-couch.de), die nach einer längeren Pause mit Ritualmord ihre Serie um den Ermittler Jack Caffery fortsetzt. Die ersten beiden Bände, Der Vogelmann (1999) und Die Behandlung (2000), waren beide recht erfolgreich und erhielten gute Kritiken. Zu dem Hörbuch brachte mich mein Lieblingsvorleser Dietmar Bär. So richtig warm geworden bin ich mit den Protagonisten Jack Caffery und der Pol...more
Jun 07, 2011
Catherine Brown (c4thb)
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
owned-swap-list
Weird and WoW! Jack Caffrey returns having left the big city for Bristol. Caffrey has moved with a few things in his life since The Treatment, and we see a darker side to him, learning more about him, his feelings and his motives. The story introduces the Walking Man, a mysterious fellow to say the least, and introduces a strong character "Flea" (Phoebe) a police diver. With similar history and family issues I felt that the pair worked well together. A good proportion of the book was learning ab...more
This is the second novel I have read by Mo Hayder, the first being Pig Island. I originally picked up Pig Island because it promised shocks and horror and I was in the mood to be scared by a novel. Pig Island however was a disappointment to me as I didn't feel it was particularly shocking or scary. Ritual however made up for the disappointment I had felt when reading Pig Island. Ritual is a two fold story, it focuses at the beginning on a hand found in Bristol Harbor but the secondary story is a...more
I normally love Mo Hayder books and I was looking forward to her latest but I was left feeling very disappointed after reading this one. The main character Jack Cafferty seems like a completely different man and the other leading character (Flea) is just weird. I found that I didn't really understand how all the characters fitted together. The `Walking Man' seemed not to be important but clearly he will be involved in the future books. I did find the topic of African Rituals very interesting and...more
I just love this author's books - she has the ability to shock and surprise. She writes great thrillers that are both shocking and disturbing.
Back Cover Blurb:
Nine feet under water in Bristol Harbour, a police diver finds a human hand.
The fact that there's no body attached is disturbing, but even more disturbing is the discovery a day later of the matching hand and the shocking evidence that the victim was still alive when they were removed.
Recently arrived from London, DI Jack Caffery is now pa...more
Back Cover Blurb:
Nine feet under water in Bristol Harbour, a police diver finds a human hand.
The fact that there's no body attached is disturbing, but even more disturbing is the discovery a day later of the matching hand and the shocking evidence that the victim was still alive when they were removed.
Recently arrived from London, DI Jack Caffery is now pa...more
I am giving this 2 because I thought it was heavily flawed - unbelievable (and I have a high tolerance for things like coincidence, but this pushed it), super gory, characters which I found at times unsympathetic, and a somewhat unsatisfying ending. For awhile there, I thought it was pretty racist, too - but then I decided, based on some comeuppances, that the athor was just writing some kind of racist characters - still, a tricky line to walk. That being said, I just read the sequel....sometime...more
I chanced across this in a charity shop, definitely 50p well spent. I had read "The Treatment" some time ago so was expecting this to be good and was not disappointed. It's very fast paced and incredibly hard to put down.
Jack is still struggling with his demons, a wonderfully damaged character. The darkness never far below the surface.
I was pleased to read that the next book also includes the new character Flea Marley introduced in this.
I am surprised ITV haven't chose to turn any of the Jack...more
Jack is still struggling with his demons, a wonderfully damaged character. The darkness never far below the surface.
I was pleased to read that the next book also includes the new character Flea Marley introduced in this.
I am surprised ITV haven't chose to turn any of the Jack...more
There isn't much to say about this book other than it's excellent. A brilliant story, brilliant writing and an engaging ensemble of characters, this is thriller writing at it's best.
If you are after a tightly written harrowing read that ticks all the positives and deftly swerves past any negatives you could do worse than read this novel - I intend on going back and reading the Jack Caffrey novels before this, but I didn't feel once that I had missed out by picking up midway through the series -
...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
“If you read the Devil of Nanking you know that this author pulls no punches. Set in the not-so-idyllic seaport of Bristol, England, this edgy story of death, drugs and African witchcraft tests the limits of the investigating officers — a woman police diver whose parents died in a deepwater pit: bodies never found, and the male detective whose brother was the victim of a pedophile: body never found. Both suffer from “survivor guilt” and are determined to solve the mystery presented by the disapp...more
This is a really poor Mo Hayder book that gets off to a tortuously slow start. The characters names are awful: Flea, Mossy and Skinny...seriously? I kept getting Skinny confused with Dobby, the house elf in Harry Potter. I'm not squeamish, but I admit I skipped over the entire sections where The Walking Man's describes his crime in lurid detail. I don't see the point that Ms. Hayder is trying to make, other than to shock, by going into such graphic detail. I liked Birdman a lot, but I can't say...more
To say I couldn't wait for this book to come out is a vast understatement. It is the third book focusing on DI Jack Caffrey, whom I fell a little in love with in Birdman and The Treatment. However, I found him quite unlikeable in this tale and was hugely disappointed with the book as a whole. I expected it to be fast paced, like its predecessors but it took me a while to get the thread of the linked stories. The book says it is 'the opening novel in the Walking Man series', but I found this quit...more
I don't normally go in for horror novels, mainly because I never find one that is actually scary or gives a feeling of unease (horror is simply hard to put into words I guess). Ritual didn't raise any goosebumps either but was still an interesting story. The main driving point was the characters, each one had a very deep and personal back story that drove them on. That level of detail drew me in and kept me readin. Plot-wise it was pretty good, not earth shattering. I would recommend you read it...more
The best book I read in 2012 was Ritual by Mo Hayder.
This is the third book in a series that follows the main character, Jack Caffrey. He's a troubled police officer who has just taken a transfer to Bristol from London. He has this whole tragic background that I won't get into because it spoils all sorts of interesting plot developments that make the tired trope of "troubled police man" worth while and overlookable. I just made up a word!
In this particular book we meet Flea Marley, a police offi...more
This is the third book in a series that follows the main character, Jack Caffrey. He's a troubled police officer who has just taken a transfer to Bristol from London. He has this whole tragic background that I won't get into because it spoils all sorts of interesting plot developments that make the tired trope of "troubled police man" worth while and overlookable. I just made up a word!
In this particular book we meet Flea Marley, a police offi...more
I'm sorry to say that Ritual was a disappointment for me.
Mo Hayder hit two grand slams with Birdman and The Treatment. These were two crime thrillers that stood out from such a thickly saturated genre. Quite the feat for a new writer on the scene.
My gushing reviews on these:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
What made these great was how successful she was at engaging the reader
in not only the storyline of the crimes at hand, but the personal struggle...more
Mo Hayder hit two grand slams with Birdman and The Treatment. These were two crime thrillers that stood out from such a thickly saturated genre. Quite the feat for a new writer on the scene.
My gushing reviews on these:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
What made these great was how successful she was at engaging the reader
in not only the storyline of the crimes at hand, but the personal struggle...more
Jul 24, 2012
Victoria
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
books-in-a-series,
mystery-thriller
This third entry in the Jack Caffery series really stands apart from the previous two volumes - and unfortunately not in the most fortunate light. Jack has changed locales, so the series shifts to a whole new setting. This change of scenery not only gives Jack a new job, but it leaves behind the people who appeared in the earlier volumes with little more than mentions about them, and certainly nothing that would constitute as an update.
The storyline is also more straightforward, without very man...more
The storyline is also more straightforward, without very man...more
PROTAGONIST: Police inspector Jack Caffery and police diver Phoebe "Flea" Marley
SETTING: Bristol, UK
SERIES: 3rd to feature Caffery; may be start of a new series
RATING: 3.25
Phoebe "Flea" Marley is the head diver for a team that supports the police force in Bristol, UK. The team is often called upon to investigate the murky local waters when crimes take place. Even after much experience in dealing with dead bodies, Flea is taken aback when she discovers one severed hand. It's clear that the mutila...more
SETTING: Bristol, UK
SERIES: 3rd to feature Caffery; may be start of a new series
RATING: 3.25
Phoebe "Flea" Marley is the head diver for a team that supports the police force in Bristol, UK. The team is often called upon to investigate the murky local waters when crimes take place. Even after much experience in dealing with dead bodies, Flea is taken aback when she discovers one severed hand. It's clear that the mutila...more
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 se...more
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 se...more
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Mo Hayder left school at fifteen. She worked as a barmaid, security guard, film-maker, hostess in a Tokyo club, educational administrator and teacher of English as a foreign language in Asia. She has an MA in film from The American University in Washington DC and an MA in creative writing from Bath Spa University UK.
Mo lives in Bath with her daughter Lotte-Genevieve.
Series:
* Jack Caffery
More about Mo Hayder...
Mo lives in Bath with her daughter Lotte-Genevieve.
Series:
* Jack Caffery
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