Birthdays for the Dead

December 3, 2012
A cop’s horrifying personal connection with a serial killer puts a chilling spin on MacBride’s solid stand-alone. Det. Constable Ash Henderson, of Oldcastle, Scotland, is on the police team investigating “the Birthday Boy,” who for the last 12 years has abducted 12-year-old girls. Each year on their birthdays, the psychopath sends their parents Polaroids of them being tortured to death. Ash’s daughter, Rebecca, was taken five years before, but to stay on the case he has hidden this fact, a secret that drives him into gambling debts with the local mob and away from his ex-wife, Michelle, and his other daughter, Katie, who both blame Rebecca for running away. Teamed with quirky forensic psychologist Alice McDonald, Ash is shaken after some of the bodies are found, just as another girl disappears. MacBride delves into revenge and grief while adding a strong emotional wallop and avoiding the clichés of the serial killer genre. Agent: Philip Patterson, Marjacq Scripts.

January 1, 2013
Vengeance compels a Scottish detective to find a brutal serial killer and to protect a dark secret. Constable Ash Henderson has received another anonymous birthday card addressed to his daughter Rebecca, who went missing five years ago shortly before her 13th birthday. Inside is a photo of his Rebecca, bound and gagged. Several other families receive the same annual torture, apparently sent by a killer who's still at large. Ash had spread the myth, even among police colleagues, that Rebecca ran away from home. Though the cards have continued to arrive on schedule, the killer the media has dubbed "The Birthday Boy" has not been active lately. So, when someone stumbles upon the remains of a young woman during a sewer repair, Henderson's heart beats a little faster. Unfortunately, he is teamed with the chirpy and optimistic Dr. Alice McDonald, whose voice and manner affect him like the screech of chalk on a blackboard. After she convinces the family of the unearthed victim to go public, reinvigorating the case, pressure mounts on Henderson as police search for other bodies in the same location. More victims mean more families to interview in the twisty investigation. Could there be a worse time for a perv named Ethan Baxter to resurface and harass Henderson's surviving daughter, Katie? Stopping him seems the only thing Henderson and ex-wife Michelle can agree on. Henderson's gritty first-person perspective adds authority and tension to a complex police procedural in which MacBride (Dark Blood, 2011, etc.) captures both the tumult and the telling details of a busy squad room.

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December 1, 2012

For the past 12 years girls have been disappearing on the eves of their 13th birthdays. Most are considered runaways until a year later when their parents receive a homemade birthday card featuring a photo of their daughters being tortured. A card arrives each year thereafter, showing progressively worse torture until a final picture shows a dead girl. When the victims' bodies are found in a park in Oldcastle, psychologist Alice Macdonald is brought in to create a profile of the killer. DC Ash Henderson is assigned to work with her, but he withholds key information from her despite his desperation to find the killer for very personal reasons of his own. VERDICT Scottish crime novelist MacBride's (Cold Granite; Flesh House) latest thriller is pure MacBride: well written, entertaining, dark, and violent. It's sure to appeal to fans of gritty Scottish thrillers by Denise Mina and Ian Rankin.--Lisa O'Hara, Univ. of Manitoba Libs., Winnepeg

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