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Mo Hayder was the pen name of British Sunday Times bestselling and prize-winning author of mystery and thriller books, Clare Damaris Bastin, who was also known as Beatrice Clare Dunkel.

After leaving school at the age of fifteen, Mo went on to work as a barmaid, security guard, filmmaker, hostess in a Tokyo club, educational administrator and teacher of English in Asia.

She earned an MA in film from The American University, Washington DC, and an MA in creative writing from Bath Spa University, UK.

A recipient of the CWA Dagger in the Library in 2011 and the Edgar Allen Poe Award, Mo Hayder passed away in July 2021 at the age of 59; months after being diagnosed with motor neurone disease.

She is survived by a husband, a daughter, an unforgettable legacy of books, and several people who loved and looked up to her.

Her most recent novel, The Book of Sand (2022), is published posthumously under the pseudonym Theo Clare.

More about Mo Hayder

Genres: Mystery, Thriller

Born: 1962 / Died: 2021

United Kingdom

Pseudonym: Mo Hayder, Theo Clare

Non Series

  • The Devil of Nanking (2004)
  • Pig Island (2006)
  • Hanging Hill (2010)

Jack Caffery

  1. Birdman (1999)
  2. The Treatment (2001)
  3. Ritual (2008)
  4. Skin (2009)
  5. Gone (2010)
  6. Poppet (2013)
  7. Wolf (2014)

Detailed book overview

Non Series

The Devil of Nanking

A young Englishwoman obsessed with an indecipherable past, Grey comes to Tokyo seeking a lost piece of film footage of the notorious 1937 Nanking Massacre, footage some say never existed. Only one man can help Grey. A survivor of the massacre, he is now a visiting professor at a university in Tokyo. But he will have nothing to do with her.

So Grey accepts a job in an upmarket nightspot, where a certain gangster may be the key to gaining the professor’s trust. An old man in a wheelchair surrounded by a terrifying entourage, the gangster is rumored to rely on a mysterious elixir for his continued health.

NB: This book is also known as Tokyo.

Author: Mo Hayder
First Release: 2004
ISBN: 978-0802122193
Publisher: Grove Press
Pig Island

Journalist Joe Oakes makes a living exposing supernatural hoaxes, but when he visits a secretive religious community on a remote Scottish island, everything he thought he knew is overturned. 

Following the trail of a strange creature caught briefly on film, so deformed it can hardly be human, Oakes crosses a border of electrical fencing, toxin-filled oil drums, and pig skulls to infiltrate the territory of the groups’ isolated founder, Malachi Dove.

Their confrontation, and its violent aftermath, is so catastrophic that it forces Oakes to question the nature of evil—and whether he might be responsible for the heinous crime about to unfold...

Author: Mo Hayder
First Release: 2006
ISBN: 978-0802123404
Publisher: Grove Press
Hanging Hill

On a picture-perfect morning in Bath, England, a teenage girl’s body is found on the towpath of a canal. Police detective Zoe Benedict is convinced the department head should look beyond the usual domestic motives to solve the brutal murder case. But no one wants to hear any far-fetched ideas from the department’s black sheep.

Meanwhile, Zoe’s sister, Sally, has started working as a housekeeper for a wealthy entrepreneur whose eccentricities are beginning to seem increasingly repugnant, and possibly dangerous. As Zoe digs into the case and Sally’s suspicions grow, all signs point to one conclusion: There’s something very wrong at the house on Hanging Hill.

Author: Mo Hayder
First Release: 2010
ISBN: 978-0802120854
Publisher: Grove Press

Jack Caffery

Birdman

In his first case as lead investigator with London’s murder squad, Det. Inspector Jack Caffery is called on to investigate the murder of a young woman whose body has been discovered near the Millennium Dome in Greenwich, southeast London.

Mutilated beyond recognition, the victim is soon joined by four others discovered in the same area—all female and all ritualistically murdered. And when the postmortem examination reveals a gruesome signature connecting the victims, Caffery realizes exactly what he’s dealing with—a dangerous serial killer.

Author: Mo Hayder
First Release: 1999
ISBN: 978-0802146120
Publisher: Grove Press
The Treatment

In a quiet residential area in London, a couple is discovered bound and imprisoned in their own home. Savagely battered and severely dehydrated, the worst revelation is yet to come: Their eight-year-old son has been abducted.

When the boy’s body is found, forensic evidence reveals disturbing parallels to events in Det. Jack Caffery’s own past. As more evidence accumulates, Caffery struggles to maintain his professional distance. But the case is hurtling toward a terrifying conclusion that will force him to confront the demons he’s tried so hard and so long to bury...

Author: Mo Hayder
First Release: 2001
ISBN: 978-0802146137
Publisher: Grove Press
Ritual

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.

Author: Mo Hayder
First Release: 2008
ISBN: 978-0802120922
Publisher: Grove Press
Skin

When the decomposing body of a young woman is found, the wounds on her wrists suggest an open-and-shut case of suicide. But Jack Caffery is not so sure.

Other apparent suicides are cropping up, and they all have a connection to Elf’s Grotto, a nearly bottomless network of flooded quarries just outside the city. Caffery begins to suspect a shadowy and sinister predator, someone—or something—that can disappear into darkness and slip into houses unseen.

Working alongside Caffery is rough-and-tough police diver Flea Marley, but while pursuing her investigation, she stumbles upon something far too close to home that no one—not even Caffery—can help her face.

Author: Mo Hayder
First Release: 2009
ISBN: 978-0802145178
Publisher: Grove Press
Gone

Jack Caffery’s new case seems like a routine carjacking until he realizes the sickening truth: The thief wasn’t after the car, but the eleven-year-old girl in the back seat. And she’s not the only young girl who’s been taken.

Meanwhile, police diver Sgt. Flea Marley is pursuing her own theory of the case, and what she finds in an abandoned, half-submerged tunnel could put her in grave danger. The carjacker is always one step ahead of the Major Crime Investigation Unit, and as the chances for the victims’ survival grow slimmer, Caffery and Marley race to fit the pieces together.

Author: Mo Hayder
First Release: 2010
ISBN: 978-0802145703
Publisher: Grove Press
Poppet

The Beechway High Secure Unit in Bristol, England, has a storied past—first as a nineteenth-century workhouse, then a poorhouse for the homeless, and now as a psychiatric hospital. With that troubled history come superstitions like the Maude, believed to be the ghost of a sadistic workhouse matron.

But while some of the patients and staff think the Maude is behind a series of unexplained episodes of self-harm amongst the ward’s patients, nursing coordinator AJ LeGrande thinks they might be the work of an all too human horror—a homicidal patient who was released back into the public in error.

Calling on Det. Jack Caffery, LeGrande hopes his investigation will reveal what’s truly been going on inside and outside the hospital’s walls. But what Caffery discovers about former patient Isaac Handel is beyond anyone’s imagining.

Author: Mo Hayder
First Release: 2013
ISBN: 978-0802121080
Publisher: Grove Press
Wolf

Wolf kicks off when a vagrant—the Walking Man, an enigmatic, recurring character in Hayder’s fiction—finds a dog wandering alone with a scrap of paper with the words “HELP US” attached to its collar. He’s sure it’s a desperate plea from someone in trouble and calls on Det. Inspector Jack Caffery to investigate.

Caffery is reluctant to get involved—until the Walking Man promises to exchange new information regarding the childhood disappearance of Caffery’s brother. Caffery has no idea who or what he is searching for, but one thing he is sure of: it’s a race against time.

Meanwhile, the Anchor-Ferrers, a wealthy local family, are fighting for their lives, held hostage in their remote home ten miles away. As their ordeal becomes increasingly bizarre and humiliating, the family begins to wonder: Is this really a random crime?

Author: Mo Hayder
First Release: 2014
ISBN: 978-0802123862
Publisher: Grove Press