Gone
Mo Hayder
(Bantam Press)
If you’ve got a weekend to spare or are still enjoying a summer break and you love thrillers, then Mo Hayder’s latest book, Gone, is the perfect book to spend the weekend with. Once you delve into the grim and rapacious world her characters inhabit, you won’t be able to stop until the last gasping word leaves you breathless.
Hayder delves deep into the psyche of the criminal and her plots are unusual, terrifying and yet highly credible in this violent world. Reviews range from compelling and harrowing to haunting and she delivers on all this in Gone.
Hayder’s experience draws on her long research association with several UK police forces and on her personal encounters with criminals and prostitutes. What she has seen and learned is translated into a series of clever and captivating thrillers with Detective Inspector Jack Caffery as the police protagonist.
Gone features everyone’s nightmare – car hijacking. But this one is different. This one had a passenger. An 11-year-old girl who is still missing, and as Caffery drives to interview the victim, his instincts are telling himit is not the first nor the last.
It’s not long before the hijacker communicates with the police and Caffery’s worst fears are realised – soon the hijacker will choose another car with a young girl on the back seat.
From the very beginning the investigation moves forward haltingly, with the hijacker always one step ahead of the police. The journey includes a cold case involving a celebrity, an intuitive tramp – the Walking Man, a keen young cop, and a young female police diver, Flea Marley.
Marley, who has worked with Caffery and with whom there has been a stumbling, abortive relationship, is the wild card of the story and as the dead ends and seemingly obvious conclusions push you forward on to the next page, she emerges as one of the major players.
Moving from the crisp, cold Bristol nights across the farming land of the area to the dank sweeps of canals, secret tunnels and mouldy earth, the plot unfolds, taking the reader on a breathtaking journey as Caffery climbs towards closure on one side and understanding on the other.
Hayder’s plots are never predictable and her characters are a step beyond the usual, perfectly drawn and highly believable. She makes you trust them, only to have you frozen with disbelief as they take an unforgiveable route.
In her main characters she traces their history and underlying issues with superb penmanship until you are living and breathing in their environment, sitting in a field under the night stars, tracking their whereabouts, following them into forbidden places.
Hayder traces the intricate web of relationships and trust and binds them together with the most horrifying of deviations to produce thrillers that linger.
Her subplots cleverly interweave with the main plot, never confusing, always a revelation!
She brings a harsh reality to the pages that defy what we read in the newspapers and yet ring frighteningly true.
That we live in a mad world is all too obvious. - The Argus