Birthdays for the Dead

Stuart MacBride

Jan 2012 · Sold by HarperCollins UK

About this ebook

Twelve years. Twelve dead girls. Thirteen will be unlucky for some.The Number One bestselling crime thriller from the award-winning Stuart MacBride. A bloody, brilliant and brutal story of murder, kidnap and revenge.

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: home-made, 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 just before their thirteenth birthday, killing them slowly, then torturing their families with his homemade cards.

But Ash hasn’t told anyone what really happened to Rebecca – they all think she ran away – 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 murderer gets what he deserves...

Ratings and reviews

I enjoyed every word of this novel. The darkening plot leads you into several devious directions at the same time. Your apprehension will build as the clues hold you captive to the bitter end.

Just goes to show you can have a great story but when it's badly written it spoils everything. Felt like reading a script everything so confusing and all characters talking at the same time and it just ends up making no sense.

I like this author a lot but as a previous reviewer stated I was expecting this to be a second book re Ash. Nevertheless a well written complex and compelling book that I read In two days when I had the flu I will be buying the next.

About the author

Stuart MacBride is the No.1 bestselling author of the DS Logan McRae series. His novels have won him the CWA Dagger in the Library, the Barry Award for Best Debut Novel, and Best Breakthrough Author at the ITV3 crime thriller awards. Stuart’s other works include Halfhead, a near-future thriller, Sawbones, a novella aimed at adult emergent readers, and several short stories. He lives in the north-east of Scotland with his wife, Fiona, and cat, Grendel.