The Calling - Softcover

Wolfe, Inger Ash

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0156033984 ISBN 13: 9780156033985

Publisher: Harper Paperbacks, 2009

Synopsis

There were thirteen crime-scene pictures. Dead faces set in grimaces and shouts. Faces howling, whistling, moaning, crying, hissing. Hazel pinned them to the wall and stood back. It was a silent opera of ghosts.

Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef has lived all her days in the small town of Port Dundas and is now making her way toward retirement with something less than grace. Hobbled by a bad back and a dependence on painkillers, and feeling blindsided by divorce after nearly four decades of marriage, sixty-one-year-old Hazel has only the constructive criticism of her old goat of a mother and her own sharp tongue to buoy her. But when a terminally ill Port Dundas woman is gruesomely murdered in her own home, Hazel and her understaffed department must spring to life. And as one terminally ill victim after another is found--their bodies drained of blood, their mouths sculpted into strange shapes--Hazel finds herself tracking a truly terrifying serial killer across the country while everything she was barely holding together begins to spin out of control.

Through the cacophony of her bickering staff, her unsupportive superiors, a clamoring press, the town's rumor mill, and her own nagging doubts, Hazel can sense the dead trying to call out. But what secret do they have to share? And will she hear it before it's too late?

In The Calling, Inger Ash Wolfe brings a compelling new voice and an irresistible new heroine to the mystery world.

About this title

Review:

"Whether this novel is a thriller, mystery or police procedural, or a combination of all three genres, it is original and suspenseful." "The story is gripping, with a tight plot, packed with shivering descriptions and taut writing." Sent to: Amazon.com and Indie Next [www.bookweb.org/indiebound, formerly Book Sense/ABA], and will appear in the next issue of I Love a Mystery [iloveamysterynewsletter.com]. It will thereafter be posted on DorothyL and 4MA [For Mystery Addicts] and should appear [online] in the NoName Cafe Book Review Corner [www.LorieHam.com] and Spinetingler Magazine [www.spinetinglermag.com/reviews/home.html] and, in print and online, in Mystery Women [www.mysterywomen.co.uk], Crimespree Magazine and in Midwest Book Review's "Reviewer's Bookwatch" [under "Theodore's Bookshelf"].
-- (03/30/2009)

From the Publisher:

Perfect for fans of Thomas Harris, Karin Slaughter or even Fargo, this is a thrilling, chilling, sinister crime novel with an all-too believable, dark villain at its core.

The killer truly is the stuff of nightmares and yet, cleverly, the gruesome and the terrifying give way to some really fun characterisation. What Inger Ash Wolfe achieves to great effect is the perfect balance of light and dark excitement. The Calling is a race against the clock, beautifully written and thoroughly absorbing from beginning to end.

It is also the first in a series featuring the very real Hazel Micallef, and readers will want to meet her again!

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0156033984
• ISBN 13: 9780156033985
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384