Skin: A Novel (Jack Caffery Book 4)

A Jack Caffrey thriller from “easily today’s best writer of visceral and elemental horror . . . guaranteed to creep out even the strongest of heart.” (Booklist, starred review)   In her eerie and hair-raising thriller Skin, Mo Hayder trails her two unforgettable protagonists as they race to staunch a rising tide of blood in a sweltering port town.   When the decomposing body of a young woman is found, the wounds on her wrists suggest an open-and-shut case of suicide. But Jack Caffery is not so sure. Other apparent suicides are cropping up, and they all have a connection to Elf’s Grotto, a nearly bottomless network of flooded quarries just outside the city. Caffery begins to suspect a shadowy and sinister predator, someone—or something—that can disappear into darkness and slip into houses unseen. Working alongside Caffery is rough-and-tough police diver Flea Marley, but while pursuing her investigation, she stumbles upon something far too close to home that no one—not even Caffery—can help her face.  Skin is a penetrating dissection of family, friendships, and the evil that can tear them apart—or bind them together. Devious and disturbing, it introduces one of Hayder’s most horrifying villains yet.   “Hayder is not a subdued writer. Her characters are almost as chilling as the horrors that they are investigating.” —The Times (London)

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Det. Insp. Jack Caffery of Bristol's Major Crime Investigation Unit looks into the case of Misty Kitson, a footballer's wife who vanished from rehab, in Hayder's chilling thriller, which picks up a few days after the grisly climax of 2008's Ritual. Caffery is distracted by the apparent suicide of a young man who he's convinced shows signs of mutilation similar to the victims of muti, the African black magic that figured in the previous book. Meanwhile, Sgt. Phoebe Flea Marley, a police diver, is busy exploring a series of flooded quarries in search of a missing woman, but her mind is elsewhere, too: the discovery that her brother, Thom, plays a vital role in Misty's much publicized disappearance. After two more alleged suicides, Caffery isn't sure if he's imagining a connection to muti, or if the answer is closer to home but no less deadly. Hayder captures the claustrophobia of Flea's dives in unsettling detail and continues to build on her two damaged heroes. (Jan.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Tired of all those lame vampire and goth horror books? Ready for something really scary? This is it. Easily today’s best writer of visceral and elemental horror, Hayder handles her genre specialty in a way guaranteed to creep out even the strongest of heart. No Lovecraftian excesses here. Hayder writes about monsters that could be real, yanked from some dank recess of the id. This combo of police procedural and African mythology continues the story from her earlier novel Ritual (2008) and marks the fourth appearance of Detective Inspector Jack Caffery and forensic diver “Flea” Marley. The enigmatic monster dubbed the Tokoloshe is also back and intertwined into a murder mystery that may, or may not, involve the supernatural. What it definitely does involve is someone or something that likes skin—especially when it’s separated from its original owner. Thus far, Hayder has been too edgy to achieve widespread recognition, but this just could be the book that launches her beyond cult favorite to mainstream star. --Elliott Swanson

From The Washington Post

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by by Patrick Anderson Too little action is not the usual problem in popular fiction; the problem is too much. Not wanting to lose the impatient reader, writers toss in everything but the kitchen sink. That is more or less what happens in Mo Hayder's "Skin," which kept me baffled much of the way. The novel is set in and around Bristol, England, and features Detective Inspector Jack Caffery and police Sgt. Phoebe (Flea) Marley, who were introduced in Hayder's earlier novel "Ritual." There is a hint of sexual attraction between the two, although Caffery claims to have sworn off women after several failed relationships. The first time Caffery and Marley meet in this novel, we're told that he "glanced at her breasts," whereupon this exchange follows: "I saw that." "Couldn't help myself. Sorry." "You're my senior officer. You're not supposed to look at me like that." It turns out that Marley was just having fun: "She liked the way Caffery had looked at her breasts. As if the T-shirt wasn't even there." There isn't much time for this sort of banter, however, because a bewildering number of bodies starts piling up and demanding our heroes' full attention. Marley is a police diver, and in an opening scene we see her in a flooded limestone quarry, diving deeper than she's supposed to, not finding a corpse but glimpsing something dark, the size of a big turtle, but with human feet. Both she and Caffery, it seems, think there is a "Tokoloshe" in the area, a creature out of African witchcraft. We see Caffery watching a video of a man being decapitated with a hacksaw, apparently by people who can sell the head for medicinal uses. We accompany Caffery as he talks with a mysterious figure called the Walking Man, who may or may not be human. We learn that a young woman named Misty Kitson is missing. Two other young women are found dead, apparent suicides. Soon, however, Caffery suspects that both were murdered. Marley has troubles closer to home. One day she notices a smell in the back of her car, opens the trunk and finds Kitson's body. It seems that Marley's worthless brother, having borrowed her car, accidentally ran down Kitson and inexplicably brought the corpse home. Against her better judgment, Marley decides to help her brother avoid punishment. Her reward: Her brother and his nasty wife concoct a story that will put the blame on Marley. Trying to prove her innocence, Marley encounters a woman who crusades to protect wildlife from motorists and is soon blackmailing the bedeviled police diver. Meanwhile, Caffery is investigating the possible murder victims. One of them left her husband, collected sex toys and seems to have been blackmailing someone before her death. Caffery's inquiries about another victim, a nurse, take him closer to the serial killer he believes to be at large, and when he finally confronts the killer, "Skin" becomes focused and suspenseful. But even then we have a letdown. Caffery gets out of a tight spot from which there is no obvious escape -- not due to his own cleverness but by something close to a miracle. One can only hope that further outings by Caffery and Marley will be less murky and far-fetched than this one. [email protected] Copyright 2010, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

About the Author

Mo Hayder has worked as a filmmaker, Tokyo nightclub hostess, and English language teacher in Asia. She is also the author of Birdman; The Treatment; The Devil of Nanking, winner of the Elle Magazine crime fiction prize; Pig Island, shortlisted for the Barry Award for Best British Crime Novel; Ritual, shortlisted both for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger award and for the coveted Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award; Skin; and Gone; as well as the winner of the 2011 Crime Writers' Association Dagger in the Library award for outstanding body of work. She lives in England.

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