A Mysterious Review of …
Birthdays for the Dead by Stuart MacBride.
Review summary: The crimes depicted in this police procedural are horrific beyond description, but are intended not to shock the reader but to help define, and later develop, the detective investigating them. Too much misdirection, some of it introduced in a surprisingly clumsy manner, both slows down and muddles the storyline as it is unfolding. (Click here for text of full review.)
Our rating:
Birthdays for the Dead
Stuart MacBride
Harper (January 2013)
Publisher synopsis: Detective Constable Ash Henderson has a dark secret …
Five years ago his daughter, Rebecca, went missing on the eve of her thirteenth birthday. A year later the first card arrived: homemade, with a Polaroid picture stuck to the front — Rebecca, strapped to a chair, gagged and terrified. Every year another card: each one worse than the last.The tabloids call him "The Birthday Boy". He's been snatching girls for twelve years, always in the run-up to their thirteenth birthday, sending the families his homemade cards showing their daughters being slowly tortured to death.
But Ash hasn't told anyone about Rebecca's birthday cards — they all think she's just run away from home — because if anyone finds out, he'll be taken off the investigation. And he's sacrificed too much to give up before his daughter's killer gets what he deserves…
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