Hanging Hill [Hardcover]

Karen: www(.)bigbooklittlebook(.)blogspot(.)com

Oh how I love Mo Hayder. She's one of those authors where if I see that she's released a new book, I'll instantly purchase / borrow the book without even bothering to read the synopsis as I just know I'll enjoy it!

For those of you who have not yet found Mo's literary charms but like crime thrillers then a word of warning. Mo's stories are pretty dark and disturbing and she is one of the few writers that actually made me so scared when reading her earlier works, 'The Birdman' and, 'The Treatment' I actually debated whether to skip a few pages as I was struggling to cope with the intensity of the action and the grim realisation that Mo has absolutely no qualms about favoured characters or vulnerable innocents suffering unspeakable horrors.

It was then, a few chapters into reading 'Hanging Hill', that I got that sense of foreboding that I was once again being invited into a very dark world. This time it involves adolescent young girls who are usually forced into the sex industry and get involved with some very nasty characters indeed who operate both in the UK and abroad.

The story focuses on two estranged sisters in their 30's. Zoë, is the beautiful police officer with Amazonian attributes. She's a fighter but emotionally stunted and self abusive when she needs to regain control. Sally is the stereotypical well to do housewife who has become overly reliant on her husband, that is, until he leaves her and starts a new family. She then has to learn the hard way that her carefree ways don't necessarily serve her well when she has a teenage daughter to look after and ever increasing bills and repairs to pay.

Separately, these women become involved in the tangled web that occurs after a local schoolgirl is brutally and sadistically murdered. They each have to make dangerous decisions and work together to try and keep themselves and those that they love, safe from harm.

Verdict: Probably not as dark and intense as some of Mo's earlier works but still a very intriguing (I shouldn't say enjoyable should I....?) read and I was very pleased with the final, 'plot twist finale' even if I will be forever wondering, 'What happened next?!'

In what I assume is the third 'stand-alone' novel from Mo Hayder (after the outstanding Tokyo and opinion-dividing Pig Island), Hanging Hill is set in the author's current-day homeland in and around Bath and is based on two long-estranged sisters Sally and Zoë Benedict who by something of a credibility-stretching coincidence are brought together by a combination of the murder of a teenage girl and the seemingly unrelated disappearance of a wealthy but sleazy businessman. Zoë is a headstrong police detective with a shadowy past, Sally a very different easy-going single-mum struggling to make ends meet. The thread to the story begins with the brutal murder of sixteen-year-old Lorne Wood, a former schoolfriend of Sally's daughter Millie - and Zoë is brought in to investigate. Meanwhile Sally gets an opportunity to boost her income by working part-time in the mansion of a man who has made his fortune in the world of pornography but who may or may not be targeted by a London-based man suspected of trafficking girls from Kosovo.

Although most of the fundamental components of a good story are carried off with professional aplomb - prose, character-building and the creation of suspense and tension - it never quite gelled until the final quarter when it became quite gripping. One of my main concerns had been that while Zoë is a police detective she rarely seemed to act like one and in fact very nearly all of her activities within this tale are independent and outside of the murder investigation; it felt as if being a cop was almost an incidental part of her make-up even if as a character she was more than interesting. One of the more intriguing elements to her persona was the habit of self-harming, and the author should be commended for not flinching in her willingness or ability to describe it quite intimately. There is another scene that is also narrated with almost disturbing intimacy, I won't mention it for fear of spoiling things but it was a welcome return to the style of writing that made Mo Hayder a success from day one. I can't help but wonder if in a future story Zoë could meet up with Mo's well-known Bristol-based detective Jack Caffery, another tortured soul if ever there was one.

It's interesting to read Mo Hayder's comments on her own forum and how she withdrew from regular online interaction with her readers following her first two novels Birdman and The Treatment because she "had months of online abuse which very nearly stopped me writing altogether. I can't lie - writers aren't superhuman and we do get hurt by criticism. Hence my decision not to read anything online which is why my contributions to this site and to Facebook are so painful and limited." It makes me wonder if the very visible 'toning-down' of her storylines later on, making them less controversial and provocative, is a consequence of this. I continue to regard Mo as a very good writer of crime fiction tales, she's still one of the best, but I do wish she would shake off those self-imposed restraints in the way she did some ten years ago, when she wrote cutting-edge narratives with hardly a care for what reaction they might cause. These days she's a better all-round writer but the self-censorship is still apparent. Hanging Hill is a good story and I'm glad I pre-ordered it in hardback. It hasn't put me off doing the same thing again this time next year, but I keep hoping she'll dare to write in the dark, ruthless way that she did when she first came onto the scene.

Thanks to Roman Clodia for saying "Excellent review! Thanks for giving a feel for the book without giving away the plot - I haven't read this yet but am looking forward to it" and to Rosie Reader for saying "An excellent review and i couldnt agree more with every word - thank you"

As many others have stated in these "bad" reviews, i LOVE Mo Hayder. The Caffery series is one of my favourites in this genre (along with the Charlier Parker series by Connoly), even more so after Flea Marley entered into it. But i think i love the stand alone books like Tokyo and Pig Island even more, as they REALLY get into your head and make you cringe (as these kind of books should do, in my opinion). I think i have read all her books, and i am excited every time there is a new arrival.

But Hanging Hill did not live up to my expectations at all. In fact i was thoroughly underwhelmed. I read somewhere that Hayder has been critiqued earlier for being too graphic or too offensive in her imageries. But as i've already mentioned, that is what makes her books stand out from the others, that is part of what makes her books even BETTER, and it forces you to get more involved. When i was reading this book i almost felt like she was trying to please those easily offended readers, and tried to make a "mainstream" story. This did not work for me, it was almost boring in parts, and on top of that i feel like the plot has some serious flaws that left me incredibly frustrated. And I'm not even talking about the "open" ending, but there are some events throughout the book that simply do not add up in the end. Maybe i missed something, but i just didnt feel it was worth going back to try and figure it out since my overall impression of it was poor anyway. It felt like there were parts in there JUST to try keeping you confused about who the bad guy was, not to add to the story in any other way.

If you are new to Mo Hayder, go try Tokyo (or devil in nanking or whatever the title of that is now), or Pig island, or treat yourself to something in the Caffery series. Don't start with Hanging Hill, because you will get the wrong impression of this otherwise brilliant author.

As for myself, I have not given up on Mo, I am still a fan and I will still be waiting for new arrivals. I'll just hide Hanging Hill at the back of the shelf somewhere and try to forget that it excists.