Pig Island - Softcover

Hayder, Mo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802123406 ISBN 13: 9780802123404

Publisher: Grove Press, 2015

Synopsis

Mo Hayder, who writes dark, perfect thrillers . . . now spins a shivery tale about a cult on the west coast of Scotland, where the weather nourishes bleak menace.” Sherryl Connelly, New York Daily News

Another astonishing mutation of the crime thriller . . . [Pig Island] masterfully exposes not only the horror but also the human frailty at the story’s core.” Anna Mundow, The Boston Globe

From Edgar Award winner and internationally bestselling author Mo Hayder, Pig Island is a riveting, disturbing thriller of religious fanatics, hoax debunkers, and the dark side of belief. Journalist Joe Oakes makes a living exposing supernatural hoaxes, but when he visits a secretive religious cult on a remote Scottish island, everything he thought he knew is overturned. While investigating a strange apparition caught briefly on film wandering the lonely beaches of Pig Island, so deformed it can hardly be human, Oakes crosses a border of electrical fencing, toxin-filled oil drums, and pigs’ skulls to infiltrate the territory of the group's isolated founder, Malachi Dove. The violent consequences of Oakes’s transgression are so catastrophic that it forces him to question the nature of evil and to face a terrible reality: was Dove responsible for one of the bloodiest crimes Scotland has seen in years? And, worse, have his actions set into motion a killing machine that will stop at nothing?

A novel that taps into the current fascination with all things supernatural and questions our assumptions about a number of subjects, from faith healing to cultish religious groups and society’s definition of evil.” Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

Mo Hayder has a profound ability to shock and surprise her readers, and Pig Island surpasses anything she has written before. She’s the bravest writer I know.” Karin Slaughter, author of Cop Town

About this title

About the Author

Mo Hayder won the Edgar Award for Best Novel for Gone and the 2011 Crime Writers’ Association Dagger in the Library Award for outstanding body of work. She is also the author of Birdman, The Treatment, The Devil of Nanking, Ritual, Skin, Hanging Hill, Poppet, and Wolf. She lives in England.

Review

"Hayder skillfully melds an atmosphere of fear and a gripping sense of place in this thriller set on a remote Scottish island owned by Psychogenic Healing Ministries, whose followers the locals believe to be Satanists. A humanoid creature with a long tail has been captured on video, and repeated analysis reveals no hint of technological fraud. But world-weary, thirtysomething hoax buster Joe Oakes is on the case. His history with PHM's former leader, Malachi Dove, spans two decades. Oakes blames faith-healer Dove for his aunt's horrendous death and for duping him into believing he had a deadly tumor. He published an expose, and Dove's threatened retaliatory lawsuit fizzled because the healer was presumed dead. Years later, Oakes finally lands an invitation to Pig Island, home of 30 PHM cultists. It's rather a paradise, except for the occasional smell of putrefying flesh. To Oakes' amazement, isolated on the other side of the island behind a row of pig skulls is none other than Malachi Dove. Whitney Scott
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Another astonishing mutation of the crime thriller . . . [Pig Island] masterfully exposes not only the horror but also the human frailty at the story’s core (Anna Mundow, The Boston Globe)

"At the start of Hayder's profoundly creepy and creepily convincing thriller, hard-bitten journalist Joe Oakes arrives on the west coast of Scotland to visit a reclusive cult on remote Pig Island. Oakes hopes to investigate a supposed half-animal, half-human creature distantly glimpsed in a tourist's film and settle his long-held grudge against the cult's founder, charismatic crackpot Malachi Dove, who has long since withdrawn to his barricaded compound on Pig Island. In the ensuing mayhem, Oakes wins the confidence of Dove's mysterious daughter and learns the hard way that the investigative skills on which he prides himself are flimsy at best. Though gruesome enough to satisfy even the most hardcore horror fan, this rigorously imagined novel is also full of apt (if bleak) detail and graced with a perfect plot twist at story's end. Hayder (The Devil of Nanking) offers both a riveting story and a nuanced, distinctly modern look at secrecy and publicity, belief and skepticism, normal and taboo, (in)sight and blindness. (Mar.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0802123406
• ISBN 13: 9780802123404
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352