Wolf

March 31, 2014
In Hayder’s unsatisfying fifth crime thriller featuring Somerset-based Det. Insp. Jack Caffrey (after 2013’s Poppet), Jack takes leave from his official duties and throws himself once again into investigating the disappearance of his older brother, Ewan, who vanished at age nine and was thought to be murdered by a local pedophile. Jack turns for help to the Walking Man, a mysteriously wise vagrant, who agrees to provide information about Ewan if Jack will try to find the owner of a lost dog named Bear. Bear escaped from her home after it was invaded by two men posing as police officers and who are keeping her owners—scientist Oliver Anchor-Ferrers; his wife, Matilda; and their 29-year-old daughter, Lucia—hostage. The reasoning behind the in-home kidnapping emerges frustratingly slowly. As Jack and the Anchor-Ferrers look for answers, each in their own way, readers will wish in vain for a cameo from Jack’s intrepid, rule-breaking sometimes partner, Flea Marley. Agent: Jane Gregory, Gregory & Co. (U.K.).

April 1, 2014
Hayder (Hanging Hill, 2012, etc.) once again lures DI Jack Caffery into evil's morass. Oliver Anchor-Ferrers owns Turrets, an English country estate in Somerset. Arriving with wife Matilda, daughter Lucia and their dog, Bear, Oliver intends to recuperate after heart-valve surgery. While clearing the garden, Matilda discovers a string of intestines "draped almost delicately in the bushes," a discovery mimicking the residue left after a gruesome killing 15 years past. Back then, Lucia's teenage boyfriend and another girl were murdered and disemboweled. Hayder's story is complex, with narrative threads leading from the old murder; from the present, as the Anchor-Ferrers are held captive and tortured; and from the muddied mind of Caffery, who stumbles into the murderous affair as he searches out his own demons. Rural Somerset comes alive, with the lush green growth, the rain, and the cranky, isolated Victorian estate beyond cellphone coverage. Fueled by whisky, e-cigarettes and indifference to authority, Caffery's the archetypical angst-driven hero, obsessed by the pedophile ring that kidnapped his brother decades earlier. It's the Walking Man, an itinerant loner who obsessively circles the site of his own daughter's murder, who finds the dog, Bear, with the message "Help Us" attached to his collar. That draws Caffery into the hostage situation. Sexual obsession, rejection as fuel for violence and revenge on the part of an arms dealer all add to a chilling, ominous atmosphere in which mangled characters lurk--Ian the Geek and Honig, the captors; the retired colonel who lives nearby with a wheelchair-bound wife and a nurse in his bed; and Oliver, fraught with fractured mortality after his heart operation and yet strong enough to puzzle out the source of the obscene bloodlust. Another adventure for Caffery, a protagonist much like James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux or Paul Cleave's Theo Tate, doomed to work "in the presence of evil."

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November 15, 2013

Edgar Award winner Hayder has achieved international best-sellerdom with premises that make your nerves positively ache. Here, a vagrant named the Walking Man rescues a dog wandering about with the desperate note "HELP US" attached to its collar. Det. Insp. Jack Caffery isn't interested in tracking down the dog's owners until the Walking Man indicates that he knows something significant about the childhood abduction of Jack's brother.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 15, 2014

In Hayder's best Jack Caffery thriller yet, a worn-out Jack is feeling all the years he has put into police service and his never-ending quest to find out what happened to his long-lost brother. The novel opens with a young girl finding a stray dog with a ripped note tucked into its collar that states, "Help us." A vagrant known as the Walking Man witnesses this and promises the young girl that he will help the dog. Never one to give out information willingly, the Walking Man surprisingly contacts Jack--offering up a trade: find out who needs help and, in return, the Walking Man will give Jack some closure about his brother. This deal with the devil sets off a home invasion novel unlike no other. The Anchor-Ferrers, a wealthy family with secrets and issues of their own, are being held hostage in their estate. Will Jack find them in time? And why was this family chosen in the first place? VERDICT Dark and twisty, this gripping crime novel by an Edgar Award winner is an outstanding read, whether Jack is a new character to the reader or an old friend. For fans of John Connolly or Robert Crais. [Library marketing.]--Marianne Fitzgerald, Severna Park H.S., MD

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.