A while ago I talked a friend of mine into buying this book at the wonderful Readers Feast in the city. I'd heard a lot of whispers about the book, and as my friend's tastes have been veering a little to the darker side recently - I thought it might be worth a try. I also wouldn't have minded reading it myself when she'd finished.
She was very startled by the violence - even to the point of discomforted by the gore and violence so I plucked the book off the top of the lending stack to read it as a comparison. I've actually been reading it now for a little while, but because I'm an idiot and forgot to pack it for a work trip away, I'm not as far through as I should be. So far it's creepy and very discomforting but the violence hasn't got to me yet. My friend assures me I've got more to go.
From the Blurb:
Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef of Port Dundas, Canada is making her way towards retirement with something less than grace. Hobbled by a bad back, and a dependence on painkillers, and blindsided by her recent divorce, sixty-one year old Hazel has only the constructive criticism of her old goat of a mother to buoy her.
But when a Port Dundas woman is found murdered in her home - with no sign of resistance and her mouth sculptured into a strangely meaningful shape - Hazel's bickering department springs to life.
Opening Lines:
He was precisely on time.
For most of the afternoon, Delia Chandler had busied herself with small tasks around the house. She had already vacuumed the upstairs and downstairs that week, but she did it again, taking care to move tables and chairs to ensure that she got the head of the vacuum everywhere that dust could hide. One of Simon's tenets was cleanliness: she did not want to meet him for the first time with so much of a speck of dirt anywhere in the house.
There were thirteen crime-scene pictures. Dead faces set in grimaces and shouts. Faces howling, whistling, moaning, crying, hissing. Hazel pinned them to the wall and stood back. It was a silent opera of ghosts.
Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef has lived all her days in the small town of Port Dundas and is now making her way toward retirement with something less than grace. Hobbled by a bad back and a dependence on painkillers, and feeling blindsided by divorce after nearly four decades of marriage, sixty-one-year-old Hazel has only the constructive criticism of her old goat of a mother and her own sharp tongue to buoy her. But when a terminally ill Port Dundas woman is gruesomely murdered in her own home, Hazel and her understaffed department must spring to life. And as one terminally ill victim after another is found—their bodies drained of blood, their mouths sculpted into strange shapes—Hazel finds herself tracking a truly terrifying serial killer across the country while everything she was barely holding together begins to spin out of control.
Through the cacophony of her bickering staff, her unsupportive superiors, a clamoring press, the town’s rumor mill, and her own nagging doubts, Hazel can sense the dead trying to call out. But what secret do they have to share? And will she hear it before it’s too late?