Digital List Price:	$14.99
Kindle Price:	$9.99 Save $5.00 (33%)
Sold by:	Amazon.com Services LLC

Promotions apply when you purchase

Add an

audiobook with Audible narration for $7.49

Audiobook Price: $21.88

Save: $14.39 (66%)

Read with our free app

You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.

Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

There was an error. We were unable to process your subscription due to an error. Please refresh and try again.

Follow the author

Mo Hayder

+ Follow

More books from this author

Ritual: A Novel (Jack Caffery Book 3) Kindle Edition

by Mo Hayder (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.2 1,722 ratings

Book 3 of 7: Jack Caffery

See all formats and editions

A murder leads detective Jack Caffery into England’s drug underground in this “brilliant, dense, scary” crime thriller in the Edgar Award–winning series (The Globe and Mail, Toronto).

Nine feet under water, police diver Flea Marley closes her gloved fingers around a human hand. The fact that there’s no body attached is disturbing enough—until the discovery of the matching appendage a day later. Both hands have been freshly amputated, and there are indications that the victim was still alive when they were removed.

Newly seconded to the Major Crime Investigation Unit in Bristol, DI Jack Caffery soon establishes that the hands belong to a young man who has recently disappeared. As Caffery and Marley search for the rest of the victim—and for his abductor—they journey into the darkest recesses of Bristol’s underworld, where drug addiction is rife, street kids sell themselves for a hit, and a disturbing occult ritual may be making an unexpected appearance.

“Hayder . . . moves to another level in this spellbinder. With characters so complex, so fascinating that they could populate a dozen novels . . . Definitely one of the best crime novels of [the year].” —The Globe and Mail

“Ritual moves from the eerie and dangerous to the downright ferocious as steadily as an oncoming train . . . You’re going to love the ride.” —Jack Ketchum, author of The Lost and The Girl Next Door

“Superb . . . Hayder vividly evokes torture and drug abuse, but the violence is never gratuitous. Readers looking for visceral thrills need look no further than this gritty English series.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Hayder . . . outdoes herself, flip-flopping the supernatural and the explainable like a cycle of poison and antidote that will remain with the reader long after the final page.” —Booklist, starred review

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. At the start of Hayder's superb third crime novel to feature Det. Insp. Jack Caffery (after The Treatment), Sgt. Phoebe Flea Marley, a police diver, retrieves a severed hand from Bristol harbor. Without a corpse, the investigation stalls, until fingerprints identify the hand as belonging to Ian Mossy Mallows, a known heroin junkie. While Caffery pursues the drug angle, Flea uncovers a possible connection to muti, a brand of African witchcraft and traditional medicine that incorporates body parts into its rituals. Digging deeper, Caffery and Flea discover that Mallows may still be alive and the men responsible may be using muti as a cover for even darker purposes. Meanwhile, Flea mourns the accidental death of her parents two years earlier while they were diving in a remote pool in Africa's Kalahari desert. Hayder vividly evokes torture and drug abuse, but the violence is never gratuitous. Readers looking for visceral thrills need look no further than this gritty English series. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Once again Hayder—author of such acclaimed crime novels as The Treatment (2001), The Devil of Nanking (2005), and Pig Island (2007)—masterfully explores the horrific boundaries of culture and evil. The setting is Bristol, England, where police diving expert “Flea” Marley is called in to investigate after a human hand is found in the Avon river. The discovery links Flea with burned-out detective Jack Caffery—the lead in both Birdman (1999), Hayder’s first novel, and The Treatment—and sets the pair on a journey into England’s heroin subculture. Following a trail that becomes darker with every turn, they move relentlessly toward a confrontation with practitioners of muthi, a form of African witchcraft that uses human body parts for healing and spell-casting rituals. Hayder has long been a master at blending crime and horror genres, but this time she outdoes herself, flip-flopping the supernatural and the explainable like a cycle of poison and antidote that will remain with the reader long after the final page. Superviolent, but for those with strong stomachs, completely gripping. --Elliott Swanson

Review

Starred review. ""Readers looking for visceral thrills need look no further than this gritty English series."" - Publishers Weekly

Starred review. ""Hayder has long been a master at blending crime and horror genres, but this time she outdoes herself, flip-flopping the supernatural and the explainable like a cycle of poison and antidote that will remain with the reader long after the final page."" - Booklist

From the Back Cover

Just after lunch on a Tuesday in April, nine feet under water, police diver Flea Marley closes her gloved fingers around a human hand. The fact that there's no body attached is disturbing enough. Yet more disturbing is the discovery, a day later, of the matching hand. Both have been recently amputated, and the indications are that the victim was still alive when they were removed. Newly seconded to the Major Crime Investigation Unit in Bristol, DI Jack Caffery is attempting to leave behind his failed personal life in London. Still haunted by the disappearance of his brother, he is looking for a man recently released from a high- security prison, a man who sleeps rough and walks the country roads as he relives the memories of a terrifying crime. Caffery and Flea soon establish that the hands belong to a boy who has recently disappeared. Their search for him, and for his abductor, leads them into the darkest recesses of Bristol s underworld, where drug addiction is rife, where street-kids sell themselves for a hit, and where an ancient evil lurks; an evil that feeds off the blood - and flesh - of others ... RITUAL is the opening novel in Mo Hayder s Walking Man series

About the Author

Mo Hayder's debut, Birdman, was an international bestseller. Her second novel, The Treatment, also a Sunday Times bestseller, won the 2002 WH Smith Thumping Good Read award. Her third novel, Sunday Times bestseller Tokyo, won the Elle magazine crime fiction prize, and the SNCF Prix Polar. She has also written the bestselling Pig Island, as well as three books in the Walking Man series: Ritual, Skin and Gone.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B008V43L6M
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Atlantic Monthly Press (September 15, 2008)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 15, 2008
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 5196 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 428 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #570,880 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #7,492 in Police Procedurals (Kindle Store)
- #9,039 in Crime Thrillers (Kindle Store)
- #11,143 in Murder Thrillers

Customer Reviews:
4.2 1,722 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Mo Hayder

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Mo Hayder (born 1962) is a British author of crime and thriller fiction.

She is the author of eight novels. Her debut, Birdman, was published in January 2000 and was an international bestseller. Her second novel, The Treatment, was a Sunday Times bestseller and won the 2002 WH Smith Thumping Good Read award. Her third novel, Tokyo, was published in May 2004 and was another Sunday Times bestseller. Tokyo was published as The Devil of Nanking in the United States in March 2005. Pig Island was her fourth best seller and was published in April 2006. Pig Island was nominated for both a Barry Award for Best British crime novel, and a CWA dagger. Her fifth book, Ritual was the first in The Walking Man series, and was nominated for CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger award. Skin is the second book in The Walking Man series, and was released in early 2009. Gone, the third book in The Walking Man series, was released in February 2011; it won the Edgar Award for Best Novel. Her novel Hanging Hill was published 2011, and Wolf in 2015.

Hayder left school at fifteen, and has worked as a barmaid, security guard, film-maker, hostess in a Tokyo club, educational administrator and a teacher of English as a foreign language. Hayder has an MA in film from The American University in Washington DC, and an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University.

Her debut novel, Birdman, was published in 2000 to wide acclaim. Although some reviewers found the novel (which concerns a serial killer with a particularly vicious modus-operandi) too violent and disturbing, the book became an international bestseller. Birdman introduced readers to DI Jack Caffery, a character who also featured in Hayder's second novel, The Treatment. The Treatment tackled themes of paedophilia. DI Caffery returned in Hayder's recent novels Ritual, Skin, Gone, and Wolf, which she calls the Walking Man series.

Mo Hayder lives just outside Bath, England with her partner, Bob Randell (retired police sgt of Avon & Somerset Police Underwater Search Unit), and her daughter.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5

1,722 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Aussie

Enthralling & A Little Gut-Turning

Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2017

Verified Purchase

Really good story, but a little gut-churning as these stories are. Definitely not a serious for anyone sensitive to certain subjects. Enthralling, and I certainly didn't pick the killer. It's also left a bit of a mystery.
The only thing that confused me a bit was the author discussing the hero in "The Problem with Caffery". She states he's a 'woman-beating alcoholic'. I didn't see this in the previous books I've read. Yes, he drinks, but I wouldn't class him as an alcoholic, and I certainly didn't read anywhere that he was a woman-beater nor read any scenes where he beat up a woman. Maybe it's a British slang term for something else? Not sure. But interesting how sometimes the author's POV is so different to reader's.
Nevertheless, I will be reading more of this series, and recommend it for anyone who likes hard-subject thrillers.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Jean Fleming

A Great Caffery Book

Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2018

Verified Purchase

This is another great book in this series. It was good to finally meet the mysterious Walking Man, too. I understand he shows up in the series once in a while.

The story line is gruesome and a bit scary. Flea is involved as the head diver in the police force. She seems to run on adrenaline and instinct. The interaction between her and Caffery is starting to get interesting in this novel. I highly recommend this book.

Helpful

Big Daddy

Review of Ritual: A Novel by No Hayder

Reviewed in the United States on February 24, 2013

Verified Purchase

I rated this novel with five stars. I admired the way the writer interwove the plot elements so as to add suspense by degrees while leading the reader to sometimes doubt the character of one of the main players in the drama like Jack Cafferty and others, by the way she revealed some of their own strange behaviors and twisted thinking, at times, throughout the novel. I also loved ten climatic ending and how the killer was stopped and apprehended. The development of Fleas' character was remarkable, also, in how both her vulnerabilities and strengths were exposed to reveal an amazing young woman! This was a rich and enjoyable read!

Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2022

Verified Purchase

I believe Mo Hayder was distinctly brilliant. Phenomenally insightful. Profoundly wise. A master story-teller. I believe she spent maybe thousands of hours researching EACH BOOK, interviewing people who did, for a living or as a calling, that which her granularly observed, complex, surprising and, often satisfying, characters did. I also believe that she, as a writer, could be tangential. Undisciplined, in ways. Which can be thrilling. It can also, as with “Ritual”, lead her down an, at least satisfying-for-her, rabbit hole where characters who should remain peripheral become central and factoids roll downhill like snowballs. And, she engages in far too much “writing the research”. One can let one’s research inform or one can allow it to dominate. Take Ibogane. No, really, take it. An hallucinogen, it will open your mind and heart and soul to the memories, colors, lights and monuments of your past, even the voices of the dead. “Ibogane”. A root or tuber which, when chewed upon, allows the author to take literal, limitless, flights of fancy. Every writer needs their Ibogane. Here, this perhaps fictional substance, is used primarily in rituals, in South Africa. But we are never really told to what purpose. The drug in the root can help people with narcotic addictions to give up their “gear”, but, considering that “Ritual” is a book filled with addicts, FILLED with them, nothing is made of that benefit. Here, Ibogane and drug addiction, and what these addictions do to the body, the “heart”, the “soul”, lead inevitably to betrayal, criminality, the “I am the center of the universe, and my need is THE need” mode of thinking, as well as, apparently universally, prostitution. The book has purpose, but not, I’d wager, the purpose with which Hayder began writing it. And, throughout, the purpose shifts, winnowing characters and plots away, ultimately focusing almost entirely on unknowable, unsavory characters (for me, “unsavory” is usually a compliment — not here). As a strictly formal matter, where was Jack Caffery? It is his series, after all. Now, Hayder could and did define that as she saw fit, but we, well, don’t exactly miss him, particularly with how he’s been choosing to live his life of late; the alienation, the living rough, the evidence-free fascination with outsiders, the prostitutes, the lack of friends one might meet outside an Asylum. But as the prominent name on our tickets, we do expect him to “do a set”. Aside from his physical and contextual absence here, Hayder, I hope, eventually stopped limiting Caffery to almost entirely “The Man Who Lost His Brother” and began to dig below, dig above, inward and outward, allowing layers, dimensions, allowing others to dig without almost immediately hitting, with their shovels, a coffin lid. Frustrating for them. Frustrating for us. Further, on just about any level, I simply don’t believe, or “don’t buy”, that someone can be so singularly obsessed. Not within sanity. Not to live also as a functioning human being un-confined to a psychiatric ward. Given Jack’s childhood traumas, his suspicions (not facts), he could indeed be someone who, so coated with guilt, fantasy and frustration, no outside love can penetrate. And, any inner love is starved of the elements it needs to survive. Sunlight. Oxygen. Vitamin D. The warmth of a touch. The recognition of a feeling or thought coming, not from within, but from without. Also, there’s far too much Ibogane. There are also far too many very small, skeletal black men. There are too many characters who go by more than one name. Some have four. With a plethora of characters in a complex “plot”, it may be wise to stick to one name, with maybe one special nickname used by one special person. But, “Mossy” must be called, formally, five different names. I also, it’s just me, had trouble with two semi-main characters, called “Flea” and “Tig”. Neither is a name, really, but abrupt enough to, at times, interchange and confuse. I knew Flea was Flea, but I found myself, for paragraphs, believing Tig was Flea. Further, there really isnt any “criminal case” here. No real investigation. There are criminals, most motivated by attaining the next “hit”, and, at the start of the book a police, I think, diver finds two severed hands, semi-buried in the murky, trash-littered sand in the (ocean, bay, lake, river) just outside a waterfront restaurant owned by an “African” (which would be like calling me a “North American”. Africa is a CONTINANT made up of MANY COUNTRIES). So, with no case, no investigation, what do we have? Ibogane. Tiny, skeletal “Africans. Everyone’s life is ruled entirely by an addiction (Caffery’s? His brother). And, there MAY be a budding sort of maybe romance between Caffery and Flea, the maybe police diver (whose feet are begining to web). She is described as tiny, skeletal, blond hair. I have no idea what she looks like, but a look from Jack makes her fall off a pier). So, read. Struggle. Worth it? It’s MO HAYDER!

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

I liked the colors and it washed beautifully.

Great purchase!

Reviewed in Canada on January 17, 2024

Verified Purchase

Book in mint condition! So hard to find and was easy with this seller! Would buy again. Thank you!

Amazon Customer

Thrilling thriller

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 9, 2024

Verified Purchase

A great thriller, very exciting.

Cliente Amazon

Ritual

Reviewed in Italy on August 22, 2019

Verified Purchase

Ha il suo perché, poi come sempre va a gusti senza voler sempre fare troppa filosofia dietro ad un romanzo

Translate review to English

MAXINE PARK

Ignore the poor reviews!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 24, 2023

Verified Purchase

I've read the first two books in the Jack Caffery series and was put off by the poor reviews for this one but wanted to read it before book 4 which has better reviews. I wasn't expecting much but I've been pleasantly surprised. I think the issue with the reviewers is that this book spends a lot of it's time on Flea, a new character. I didn't mind that, her story isn't dull. I also found the subject matter of the previous book The Treatment really hard to read in parts and had to take breaks due to how graphic and disturbing it was (and I love the serial killer/detective genre) so this book felt a bit lighter and easier to read. It is not a shocker but has set the scene nicely for Jack's new life in Bristol so I'm going straight on to the next one.

Lorena

Ritual

Reviewed in Italy on September 12, 2014

Verified Purchase

Scritto benissimo, ogni capitolo termina in maniera inaspettata ed è necessario iniziarne un altro. I personaggi entrano nel cuore, originali, complessi, studiati perfettamente. Ottima lettura, da consigliare senz'altro!

Buy for others

Buying and sending eBooks to others

Follow the author

Image Unavailable

Ritual: A Novel (Jack Caffery Book 3) Kindle Edition

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From Booklist

Review

From the Back Cover

About the Author

Product details

Videos

About the author

Mo Hayder

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries