The Treatment - Hardcover

Hayder, Mo

4.03

12,668 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385496958 ISBN 13: 9780385496957

Publisher: Doubleday, 2002

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Detective Jack Caffery, the troubled hero of Birdman, returns to investigate a brutal attack on a London couple and the mysterious disappearance of their young son, a crime that brings him face to face with nightmarish memories of his own past.

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Review:

Sometimes things are far worse than you can possibly imagine. Mo Hayder's second novel The Treatment takes us further into the heart of psychological darkness than we expect to go. Someone broke into the Peaches' house and left a husband and wife chained to radiators to die of thirst and starvation, taking their young son off to an even worse fate. Inspector Jack Caffery lost his own brother to abduction and murder, which makes his hunt for the killer perhaps rather too personal. Caffery is in a dysfunctional relationship with the equally disturbed sculptor Rebecca, who survived with him through the events of Hayder's Birdman; the edginess this gives him makes him at once a brilliant investigator of an insane crime and a danger to all around him. And the killer has already struck again--another family are chained up in their home, awaiting the worst atrocity of all...This is a compellingly dark thriller--Hayder's sense of South London as an overlapping patchwork of social worlds is particularly strong and she makes an ordinary place like Brockwell Park a site of deep unease. Hayder's imaginative intensity makes her book a powerful nightmare, but works just as well when describing Caffery's eventual healing. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

"One of the most frightening books I've ever read... Hayder's gory insights into the dark side are compelling" (GUARDIAN)

"Chilling... the book is surprisingly hard to put down. The plot develops with satisfying unpredictability; the characters are compellingly drawn... its final twist a bravura savagery" (DAILY TELEGRAPH)

"Bleak, powerful... The Treatment is cleverly plotted and Caffery is a believable creation" (OBSERVER)

"Mo Hayder's debut, Birdman, was deservedly an unqualified success... and Hayder has lost none of her descriptive expertise along the way" (TIME OUT)

"There is no better example of a contemporary masterpiece than Mo Hayder's The Treatment. Whether she's exploring social issues such as homelessness and child abuse or just scaring the bejeezus out of you, Hayder spins a tale that feels like a razor slicing apart your soul. The plotting is extremely disciplined, the sort of structure to which all authors should aspire, and the story is a searing dark tale that makes you bolt up in bed during the middle of the night, wondering if that sound you heard was the cat, or Death dragging its sickle across the floor" (Karin Slaughter SUNDAY TELEGRAPH)

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