Synopsis of Birthdays for the Dead
The gritty new standalone crime novel from the No. 1 bestselling author of Shatter the Bones and Dark Blood.
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: homemade, 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 in the run-up to their thirteenth birthday, sending the families his homemade cards showing their daughters being slowly tortured to death.
But Ash hasn’t told anyone about Rebecca’s birthday cards – they all think she’s just run away from home – 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 killer gets what he deserves…
Review
Very good and more entertaining than the novels of the Logan McRae series by the same author. The plot is good, original and well-constructed. The protagonist is very good, and I don’t necessarily mean just a good person; he’s dense, with very strong motivations.
I don’t think it’s been translated but I highly recommend it.