Birthdays for the Dead - Softcover

MacBride, Stuart

Softcover

ISBN 10: 000734418X ISBN 13: 9780007344185

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 2012

Synopsis

The Number One bestselling crime thriller from the award-winning Stuart MacBride. A bloody, brilliant and brutal story of murder, kidnap and revenge.
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 just before 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…

About 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

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 000734418X
• ISBN 13: 9780007344185
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496