Birthdays for the dead

The gritty new standalone crime novel from the No. 1 bestselling author of Shatter the Bones and Dark Blood. 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: homemade, 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 in the run-up to their thirteenth birthday, sending the families his homemade cards showing their daughters being slowly tortured to death. But Ash hasn't told anyone about Rebecca's birthday cards -- they all think she's just run away from home -- 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 killer gets what he deserves.

The tabloids call him the Birthday Boy. He snatches girls just before their thirteenth birthdays. No ransom demand. No evidence. No signs of foul play. One year later the family get a homemade card in the post -- 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!' scrawled in blood-red ink above a Polaroid photograph of the missing girl; gagged, tied to a chair, tears streaming down her face. A new card arrives every year, each one documenting their daughter's last birthday as she's slowly tortured to death. Detective Constable Ash Henderson isn't exactly the poster boy for community policing -- divorced, demoted, under investigation for corruption, and struggling to pay off gambling debts to Oldcastle's gangland boss -- so when the head of CID seconds him to the Birthday Boy investigation it's a chance for him to lie low for a while. But things are spiraling out of control: the Birthday Boy knows Ash is hunting him, more girls are going missing, and Ash's daughter is about to turn thirteen! There will be no second chances.