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Book Review of Birdman (Jack Caffery, Bk 1)

Birdman (Jack Caffery, Bk 1)
crysteena73 avatar reviewed on + 54 more book reviews


Very gritty police procedural set in England. This is Mo Hayder's first book and what an outstanding book it is. This is one author who will rank right up there with Jeffery Deaver and James Patterson.

Detective Jack Caffery--young, driven, and seemingly unshockable--catches a career-making or career-breaking homicide in his first case as lead investigator with London's crack murder squad. A young woman's body has been discovered, dumped on wasteland near the Millennium Dome site in Greenwich, England. It's the most brutal degradation of the human form that the squad has ever uncovered. Caffery's well-deserved reputation is that of the most stoic of detectives, but his initial inspection of the corpse will forever sear his psyche.

One by one, four more corpses are discovered only steps away from the first. Five bodies, all young women, all ritualistically murdered with cunning precision. And when a postmortem examination reveals a singular, macabre signature linking the victims, Caffery realizes that he's facing the most dangerous offender known to the force: a sexual serial killer.

In the murky recesses of his own mind, Caffery harbors the haunting legacy of a loved one's slaying. What baffles him is that not a single missing person's report has been filed for any of the five young women. How has the Birdman chosen these seemingly perfect victims?

Now, as he employs every weapon forensic science can offer, Caffery knows that time is running out before the killer strikes again, and that he must put away his torured past in order to safeguard the Birdman's next prey.