Regular marked price: $22.00Discount Price: $14.96
Cost Savings: $7.04 (32%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN num: 9780871139924
ISBN number: 0871139928
Label: Atlantic Monthly Press
Manufacturer: Atlantic Monthly Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 416
Printing Date: September 15, 2008
Publishing house: Atlantic Monthly Press
Sale Popularity Level: 80080
Studio: Atlantic Monthly Press
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Mo Hayder's previous novels The Devil of Nanking and The Treatment have ranked her among the most exciting and provocative thriller writers now working. In her latest, Ritual, Hayder gives us a taut, chilling tale of clandestine occult practices, New Age medicine, and the drug underground, set in a hypermodern urban landscape challenged by colliding immigrant cultures.
Just after lunch on a Tuesday in April, nine feet under water, police diver Flea Marley closes her gloved fingers around a human hand. The fact that there's no body attached is disturbing enough. Even more disturbing is the discovery, a day later, of the matching hand. Both have been recently amputated, and the indications are that the victim was still alive when they were removed. DI Jack Caffery has been newly seconded to the Major Crime Investigation Unit in Bristol. He and Flea soon establish that the hand belong to a young man who has recently disappeared. Their search for him—and for his abductor—lead them into the darkest recesses of Bristol's underworld, where drug addiction is rife, where street-kids sell themselves for a hit, and where one of Africa's most disturbing rituals may be making an unexpected appearance.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
The very first page of RITUAL describes a crater that surrounds a pool of water. This sinkhole is so cold that only a few canefish manage to survive there. Anyone who comes upon it by chance or design will find it to be unusually still, and if they choose to take a dip, they'll discover too late that there is no way to climb out of this bottomless pit. This anomalous body of water, located in South Africa's Kalahari Desert, has quite a reputation among a certain segment of the world's population; divers see it as one of the ultimate cave formations to conquer. "This is Bushman's Hole. This is Boesmansgat [and] to the Kalahari people, This is the path to hell."
Chapter One begins in Bristol's floating harbor, where 29-year-old Sergeant Phoebe "Flea" Marley is nine feet under silt-filled grey water, handling a disarticulated human hand that she cannot actually see. Her partner, PC Rich Dundas, keeps track of her from above, and she hears him speak to her through her earpiece. He knows about the hand and is anxious for her to surface. But she decides to stay where she is a while longer because she thinks she senses a "presence" but could neither hear nor see anything.
When she surfaces and is getting dressed, she begins to examine her toes and is frightened by the webbing that is growing between them. So far this is her secret. When Dundas calls her name, she quickly puts on socks and turns to find DI Jack Caffery, Deputy SIO. He's just been transferred to this part of the country, and while very experienced, he has a lot to learn about this place. Unfortunately, he was under the misconception that the hand was the result of a suicide, but it's not. It's been sawed off, which means...murder.
Then the second hand is found under the restaurant on the dock, owned by Mr. Mdebele, an African émigré who is very familiar with the sacrifices imposed by the occult practices of muti (witchcraft medicine). As it happens, hands are an integral part of ritualistic mutilation of live victims. Was someone trying to bring luck to Mdebele's restaurant business, or were they setting him up as the perpetrator of the barbarism?
The hands remind the cops that a few years ago the torso of a very young male was found in London waters. The authorities named him "Adam" but never did find out who he was, nor did they ever discover who butchered him. They had no way of knowing at the time if he was the victim of a demented sadist or if someone who was practicing African muti had captured him. However, over time the strange disappearances of young boys coupled with twisted rumors about strange doings flooded Bristol. Those in the know kept a keen eye on events that could be the result of the practice of African grey magic, or worse.
When Mdebele is vetted, the investigators learn that he is involved in the rampant drug underground in Bristol. But does he practice or know who is involved with muti, and will he help the authorities?
Some of the other major characters who populate RITUAL include Mossy, a drug addict who wants to get clean, and to pay for the treatment he agrees to become part of a ghoulish business that deals in human blood and other pieces of the body; his "friend" Skinny, a bottom feeder who traffics in human body parts and has a deformed brother who looks like a baboon; The Walking Man, an ex-con living free in the woods surrounding Bristol, a strange individual who Caffery is drawn to; and Flea's brother, a young man who cannot accept the death of his parents in a diving accident at Bushman's Hole.
RITUAL is a bold, provocative and chilling book. The superbly researched material that is the landscape against which Hayder has woven this most fascinating novel will open lines of thought that readers may not have ever considered. The juxtaposition of Bristol, a small English town, against the mysterious Kalahari Desert is blinding in its opposition to each other. Her plot points also shine a light upon the way Africans live in England. What Hayder has done is override the media coverage of this problem, especially exposing the cultural blocks based in ancient religious practices such as witchcraft, torture and arcane beliefs. But can it be that those who are mutilating and killing young boys are really using those acts as a blind to cover more horrendous activities?
RITUAL does not read like a textbook. Quite the opposite! Mo Hayder manages to craft a plot rich in facts, each of her characters has a backstory that places her/him perfectly posed, at no time does the pace lag or become pedagogic, and the issues she raises are timely and exist in every neighborhood in one form or another. Overall the idea that things may not be as they seem is the major theme of the book. Some readers may come away from the novel considering it to be a cautionary tale. Others may see it as an excursion into an underworld that is exposed with ... Read More
Rated by buyers 
-
I was thoroughly disappointed with Ritual. Since reading Birdman and The Testament I had been excited to see that Mo Hayder had picked back up with Caffery, but this book felt like it was written by a different author. Slow, boring, and without any characters that the reader develops any connections to. I couldn't have cared less who lived/died or whodunit. Found myself ready to just stop reading mid-way through multiple times. Please read her other novels, but stay away from this one.
Rated by buyers -
I've found that a number of authors that I like, seem to repeat themselves and lose my interest after five or so novels. Partly this is because of the trend toward series novels. Mo Hayder, happily, is an exception to this trend. Each of her novels are fascinating in a different way, and this one stands beside her best(to my mind "The Treatment" and "...Nanking"). One of the things I like best about her, is that she never pulls her punches the way a number of recently popular female mystery writers have started doing. I'm not sure why, but the best fiction these days seems to be coming from Britain rather than the US. "Ritual" is wonderful and completely different from her other work. I have a strong feeling that Mo Hayder will continue to be the exception in a genre that is becoming the haunt of careerist writers rather than the more talented authors.
Rated by buyers -
After the page-turning "Birdman" and "The Treatment", I was hugely disappointed in "Ritual". It almost seemed it was written by a different author, in fact. I had hoped this one would have taken up more where the story of Jack, his brother, and relationship with Rebecca seemed to drop off a cliff at the end of "The Treatment", but it just left a huge gap. I found "Ritual" so uninteresting, I was actually nodding off at times. And this is a Mo Hayder book!
Rated by buyers -
Still grieving the loss of her parents in an accidental drowning two years ago in Boesmansgat (Bushman's Hole) in Africa, police diver Sergeant Phoebe "Flea" Marley recovers from Bristol Harbor, a detached hand; no other body part is found. The hand's fingerprints identify the limb belonged to heroin addict Ian "Mossy" Mallows.
The obvious drug connection is explored by Detective Inspector Jack Caffery; Flea investigates a seemingly loose thread tied to the African witchcraft of muti that she knows from her parents deaths in the Kalahari Desert. It uses body parts as part of the rituals. The two cops soon change their minds about finding a corpse as evidnce begins to point towards the victim being alive. They also conclude that the muti ritual is a sleight of the hand (no pun intended) ploy to cover up even more nefarious plans.
This gritty urban English police procedural hooks the audience from the opening dive until the final confrontation as the two cops uncover a case tied to illegal drug usage and the torture side of muti before realizing there is much more to the investigation. The story line is fast-paced as the readers wonders along side of Caffery and Marley what is going on especially when they feel strongly the victim is breathing. Fans will appreciate this strong investigative thriller (see THE TREATMENT and BIRDMAN; neither read by me) as Mo Hayder provides an enjoyable whodunit that focuses on learning what was done.
Harriet Klausner
Find other books like this one:
