Birthdays for the Dead - Softcover

MacBride, Stuart

3.82

5,565 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 000734418X ISBN 13: 9780007344185

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 2012

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

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 appears, 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 home-made 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 not to be there when they finally catch the psycho who killed his little girl ...

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Stuart MacBride has gone from asking people if they 'want fries with that' to project-managing vast IT projects for the oil industry. Somewhere in the middle he managed to make money out of dressing up as a woman.His first book, 'Cold Granite' was shortlisted for the International Thriller Writers' best debut novel and won the Barry Award for best first novel. The follow-up, 'Dying Light', became an instant top-ten bestseller. Stuart won the 2007 CWA Dagger in the Library, awarded for a body of work.Stuart lives in north-east Scotland with his wife Fiona, cat Grendel, and a vegetable plot full of weeds.

From Booklist:

Taking a break from his Logan McRae series, MacBride offers a stand-alone whose premise is pure, twisted genius. Ash Henderson, a big, bruising police detective in fictional Oldcastle, Scotland, has been chasing a killer who snatches girls before their thirteenth birthday, tortures them to death, and then sends birthday cards—with gruesome photos—to the girls’ families each year thereafter. The kicker? Henderson has been getting the birthday cards, too, but won’t tell anyone his missing daughter is also a victim: if he’s taken off the case, he’ll lose his chance to catch the “Birthday Boy” himself. This has all the hallmarks of MacBride’s best books—gruesome violence, foul weather, pitch-black humor, and entertainingly mismatched protagonists (Henderson is paired with “freak-show” forensic psychologist Alice McDonald). But despite all this has to offer readers so inclined, MacBride needs an editor who’s not afraid to use a knife, as the book feels about 100 pages and one plot twist too long. On the other hand, those who enjoy spending time in MacBride’s dark world may not mind a bit. --Keir Graff

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.