“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)Just after lunch on a Tuesday in April, nine feet underwater, police diver Flea Marley closes her gloved fingers around a human hand. No body is attached. Even more disturbing is the discovery, a day later, of the matching hand—recently amputated, and removed while the victim was still alive. Detective Jack Caffery of the Major Crime Investigation Unit in Bristol is called in to investigate, and he and Marley soon establish that the hands belong to a young man who has recently disappeared. Their search for him—and for his abductor—lead them into the darkest recesses of Bristol’s underworld, where street-kids sell themselves for a hit, and where one of Africa’s most disturbing rituals may be making an unexpected appearance.
