Birthdays for the Dead: The gripping No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling crime suspense thriller that will have you on the edge of your seat! - Softcover

MacBride, Stuart

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007344201 ISBN 13: 9780007344208

Publisher: Hemlock Press, 2013

Synopsis

Twelve years. Twelve dead girls. Thirteen will be unlucky for some.

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: home-made, 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, killing them slowly, then torturing their families with his homemade cards.

But Ash hasn’t told anyone what really happened to Rebecca – they all think she ran away – 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 murderer gets what he deserves…

Stuart MacBride's book 'The Coffinmaker’s Garden' was a Sunday Times bestseller w/c 23-08-2021.

About this title

About the Author

Stuart MacBride is the Sunday Times No. 1 bestselling author of the Logan McRae and Ash Henderson novels. His work has won several prizes and in 2015 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Dundee University.

Stuart lives in the north-east of Scotland with his wife Fiona, cats Grendel, Onion and Beetroot, and other assorted animals.

Reviews

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: Hemlock Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0007344201
• ISBN 13: 9780007344208
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 512