The Night Hunter

September 22, 2014
Elvie McCulloch, the caustic narrator of Ramsay’s harrowing fifth thriller featuring Det. Chief Insp. Colin Anderson and Det. Sgt. Winifred “Freddie” Costello (after 2012’s The Blood of Crows), must contend with the tensions within her dysfunctional family while trying to find her beloved sister, Sophie, who’s been missing for two months. PI Billy Hopkirk, a grungy ex-cop, assists in a search that ranges from modern Glasgow to Loch Lomond. Meanwhile, Costello and other police officers pursue the serial disappearances of young women, one of whom, naked and emaciated, dies by falling onto the top of a car. Elvie, who’s driving back to her nanny job in the middle of west Scotland’s nowhere, stops to assist the distressed motorist. Blood red herrings abound in this grim reprise of Christina Rossetti’s spooky “Goblin Market,” a poetic tribute to the special bond between sisters. Ramsay’s insights into tortured psyches makes for compelling, if often painful, reading.