Hanging Hill

Starred review from December 12, 2011
In this superb stand-alone from British author Hayder (Pig Island), the brutal murder of 16-year-old Lorne Wood, found dead in a park with words written on her corpse, draws together the Benedict sisters, Zoë and Sally, who have been estranged for years, despite both living in the city of Bath. Career-driven Zoë, a detective inspector, takes issue with her team’s reliance on a forensic psychologist. Pursuing her own line of investigation, Zoë discovers that Lorne’s modeling aspirations may have led the girl away from the catwalk and into something much seedier. Complacent Sally, a divorced mother, must take on extra housecleaning jobs to keep up with the spending of her teenage daughter, who was acquainted with Lorne. Reluctantly, Sally agrees to work extra hours for a rich businessman she soon learns makes his fortune in hardcore pornography. Secrets, both past and present, bind the sisters yet threaten to ruin multiple lives. Hayder uses her trademark violence to perfect sinister effect. Agent: Jane Gregory.

December 15, 2011
A middle-class cleaning lady. A porn kingpin. A detective who cuts herself. Hayder (Gone, 2010, etc.) has assembled an unusual cast for her latest crime novel. Her leads, Zoë and Sally, live in Bath in the West of England; they are sisters, long estranged. Both have self-esteem issues. Big sister Zoë, feeling unloved as a kid, took it out on Sally, once breaking her finger. A smart loner (her best friend is her Harley), Zoë became a detective; but still self-hating, she often punctures her skin. Sally is the airhead, miserably aware of her shortcomings. Dumped by her husband, she is raising their teenage daughter on her own and cleaning houses to make ends meet. The novel begins with the dead body of Lorne, a pretty, popular 16-year-old, found beside a towpath, raped and murdered. Zoë is assigned to the case, along with Ben, who she's been dating. After some fieldwork, attention shifts to the owner of a mansion Sally cleans, David Goldrab. He oversees a porn empire and has some connection to a top-ranking but corrupt civil servant; both men were involved in human trafficking in Kosovo. Goldrab is an entertaining, foul-mouthed villain, and some of the air goes out of the novel when he meets, all too soon, a violent end. His connection to Lorne is nonexistent, but her murder investigation gets back-burner treatment as Zoë focuses on Goldrab's disappearance. There will be a second rape and a lightly sketched dismemberment, tame by Hayder standards. What's disconcerting is that Zoë acts more like a PI than one link in a chain of command with bosses, even telling Sally, "I'm not going to the police." Yes, that's sister Sally, for by now the two have reconciled, and the spectacle of these sisters gaining strength and self-respect has become as important as the chills and thrills. The psychobabble and uncertain focus make this one of Hayder's less-impressive works.

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September 1, 2011

The author of dark and disturbing works that have received short-list attention, Hayder turns out another stylish-sounding work featuring two sisters, one a policewoman. In Bath, England, Zoe Benedict is investigating the murder of beautiful teenager Lorne Woods, good friends with the daughter of Zoe's divorced sister, Sally. Zoe soon uncovers evidence that model-hopeful Lorne had gotten herself mixed up in amateur porn. Hayder will keep you up at night.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from December 15, 2011
Bath, England, is the site of Hayder's latest roller-coaster ride into the heart of darkness. With overtones of menace that link the tarot to serial murder, Hayder continues to skirt the edge of the supernatural within the context of a police procedural, defying the reader to prove that she doesn't really have anything hidden up her sleeve. Hanging Hill introduces a new character, down-to-earth detective inspector Zoe Benedict, who finds herself butting heads with a profiler who seems to be substituting pyschological mumbo jumbo for the process of evidence gathering. Zoe's stakes in the case are amped off the scale when she finds that her sister and daughter-in-law seem to be in the sadistic killer's line of fire. It's unclear whether the novel will launch a new series for Haydercomplementing her acclaimed Walking Man novels (Gone, 2011)but certainly the fascinating Zoe would make a fine series lead. Hayder's acclaim in the genre (she is the winner of numerous awards, including, most recently, the 2011 Crime Writers' Association Dagger in the Library Award) stands only to grow in the wake of her latest triumph.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)