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Read Ritual (2008)

Ritual (2008)

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Author
Genre
Series
Rating
3.72 of 5 Votes: 2
Your rating
ISBN
0593056426 (ISBN13: 9780593056424)
Language
English
Publisher
random house

Ritual (2008) - Plot & Excerpts

Hmm. Okay I felt this was definitely a step away from the last Jack Caffery book, but I'm just not sure if it's a step forward, or simply just a step to the side. First and foremost, I have to say Hayder writes really compelling mystery plots. I love the central plots of her books. I love her writing, I love her dialogue, and I love how unapologetically guttural she gets. My issues stem from her main characters that I just don't like.Jack. Oh Jack. I really want to like you. I want to root for you. But you keep trying to beat all the antagonists to death when you finally capture them. You can't keep your dick in your pants. You cannot get over your brother's disappearance, which I would normally sympathize with and find intriguing to follow, but you make it more irritating than anything. Just let go, Jack. What makes it more frustrating to the reader (ie. me) is that we know what happened to Jack's brother, and we know the man responsible is dead, and we know there is nothing that can be done and Jack will never get the peace he needs. But Jack keeps trying fruitlessly.And now Flea Marley, the new lady protagonist. I peaked ahead and it looks like she'll be the female protag for at least one more book. I just found her personal story boring until the near end when the twist came. I don't not like her, I just didn't care for her part of the book and the ties the crime. Both characters are flawed beyond the average person so even the blind can see that these two should not be in the same vicinity of each other ever. I will persist with this series but I am not looking forward to the inevitable personal relationship that will likely ruin book 4 for me. I keep holding out hope that Hayder will redeem Jack for me. Please, please.

While Ritual was certainly much better than The Treatment, and I absolutely devoured it in a number of days, Hayder still hasn't quite found the hard-hitting perfection she found in her debut, Birdman.Jack Caffery has returned but in a different setting. There are unresolved threads from his previous life in London which aren't dealt with, and all the characters we'd become invested in are replaced by Caffery's new object of affection with almost no mention of the police force at large.While the pace of the plot is speedy and exciting just like Hayder's other novels, this one felt somehow unfinished. I did not feel satisfied toward the end, and felt like too much had been left unfinished. So much of the plot also relied on coincidences between the characters which were almost laughably contrived as it was Caffery's first case in Bristol. Hayder once again shows herself to be a talented writer, as I felt myself unwilling to put the book down and just kept turning pages to find out what happened next. However getting to the end left me disappointed that there hadn't been more to it. With such a big set up, the end came too quickly and too anticlimactically to leave me feeling any sense of resolution.Will I read the next Caffery thriller? Almost certainly, if only to find out if the resolution that I found so lacking in this novel will appear in the next.

What do You think about Ritual (2008)?

This is the third Jack Caffrey book and by far less violent then the other two. Jack is still tormented by his brother's disappearance some 30 years ago, but angrier. He is investigating a mutilation case where only two hands are found. The story gets really interesting because not only does he have to find out who the hands belong to, but also who did it. It was a little disappointing to see that Jack has become even more negative and aggressive. I am looking forward to reading more Jack Caffrey books with hopes that his darkness keeps on getting deconstructed.
—Gord James

I'm sorry to say that Ritual was a disappointment for me.Mo Hayder hit two grand slams with Birdman and The Treatment. These were two crime thrillers that stood out from such a thickly saturated genre. Quite the feat for a new writer on the scene.My gushing reviews on these:http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...What made these great was how successful she was at engaging the readerin not only the storyline of the crimes at hand, but the personal struggles of the main protagonist, Jack Caffrey. Running in parallel, these aspects of those novels had me glued to the pages. My care meter was running into the red for the poor victims, for Caffrey, and for what happened to Caffrey's brother.My expectations with Ritual ran as high as they did with The Treatment.But what I got was not so much progression with Caffrey, but an introduction to a couple of new characters, which I guess now will continue for further novels. And the case? Well, nowhere near as shocking as what had happened in the previous two novels.So I went from two novels that equally hooked me with two running storylines to one that struggled to hold my interest on both fronts.I'm rating this one two stars, because that indicates "it was ok". If the first two books hadn't been so outstanding, I would stop the series here. But Caffrey's character was the most interesting inspector I'd come across, so I'm giving Mo a mulligan here. But I'll be giving Skin the 50 page rule when I get to it.
—Bill

Three years have passed since the events in The Treatment, and Jack has moved to Bristol for a change. He still doesn't know what we, the readers, know concerning his missing brother Ewan, but Jack no longers feels magnetized to the places Ewan could be. None of this stops him from being the miserable creature he is, and he is quickly turning into a Class-A jerk. We are introduced to new characters, namely Sgt. "Flea" Marley, a professional diver who seems to be in charge of this case while battling her own demons from the past. This case begins with the discovery of two severed hands and no sign of a corpse...and from that point on, things get very convoluted. I had a hard time getting into this book; the first two chapters read like scuba diving instructions, and the African/witchdoctor theme was really not my thing. Then pile on some more storylines..."Flea's" angst over her parents' deaths, her angst over her simple brother, Jack's angst about Ewan, his angst over his ex, Jack and the Walking Man...etc.I also had a hard time keeping up with the characters...many of the African names looked similar and I had to backtrack several times to remember who they all were and what roles they played. I miss the old Caffery, but have hopes he can turn his life around. Despite my nitpicking, Ritual was still pretty good due to Mo Hayder's excellent prose. On to book 4. :)
—Sarah

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