Birdman - Softcover

Hayder, Mo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593045521 ISBN 13: 9780593045527

Publisher: Bantam Press, 1999

Synopsis

Your worst nightmare is his dream come true....

A relentless debut novel filled with cutting-edge forensic and investigative detail, Birdman marks the arrival of a uniquely talented writer.

Detective Jack Caffery--young, driven, and seemingly unshockable--catches a career-making or career-breaking homicide in his first case as lead investigator with London's crack murder squad.  A young woman's body has been discovered, dumped on wasteland near the Millennium Dome site in Greenwich, England. It's the most brutal degradation of the human form that the squad has ever uncovered. Caffery's well-deserved reputation is that of the most stoic of detectives, but his initial inspection of the corpse will forever sear his psyche.

One by one, four more corpses are discovered only steps away from the first. Five bodies, all young women, all ritualistically murdered with cunning precision. And when a postmortem examination reveals a singular, macabre signature linking the victims, Caffery realizes that he's facing the most dangerous offender known to the force: a sexual serial killer.

In the murky recesses of his own mind, Caffery harbors the haunting legacy of a loved one's slaying.  What baffles him is that not a single missing person's report has been filed for any of the five young women. How has the Birdman chosen these seemingly perfect victims?

Now, as he employs every weapon forensic science can offer, Caffery knows that time is running out before the killer strikes again, and that he must put away his tortured past in order to safeguard the Birdman's next prey.

With refined craft and beguiling imagination, Mo Hayder is certain to skip the hearts of the most demanding readers of crime fiction.

About this title

Review

This crackling psychological thriller introduces police detective Jack Caffery, on the hunt for a serial killer nicknamed "The Millennium Ripper" by the British tabloids after the bodies of five prostitutes are unearthed beneath the rubble of a Greenwich landfill. All the victims were raped and their bodies horrendously mutilated--but not until after they were killed by a dose of heroin injected directly into the brain stem. What stuns Caffery even more than the post-mortem savagery is the one detail of the murders the public doesn't know; the hearts of the women were replaced with birds that were still alive when they were sewn into the victims' chests. Caffery himself is a tortured man, still burdened by guilt over the decades- old murder of his younger brother and frustrated because he cannot bring the man he knows to have been responsible to the bar of justice. When the Millennium Ripper confesses to the prostitute killings just before taking his own life, Caffery faces his own limitations and begins to make peace with his past. But then another prostitute is found dead, her body savaged in the same way, a bird where her heart was, and Caffery realises that his past may never truly be put to rest. A solid page turner, this gripping debut by a young Englishwoman introduces a complex and fascinating protagonist destined for another appearance. Meanwhile, Birdman will enthral readers who just can't get enough of Hannibal Lechter. -- Patrick O'Kelley

Review

'A first-class shocker' -- Guardian

'Extraordinarily good' -- Daily Mail

'It'll scare the hell out of you' -- Elle

'Not for the faint-hearted...what sets Birdman apart is Hayder's talent' -- Val McDermid

'One of the best things I've read...she has the ability to walk the mean-streets walk as well as talk the mean-streets talk' -- Independent

Edition details

• Publisher: Bantam Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593045521
• ISBN 13: 9780593045527
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368