Got this in the post today from a UK bookmoocher.

This was a grim, rather dark and disturbing crime thriller. Mo Hayder's back on form... well, I am reading her books out of order - I read Pig Island first, then Skin. Pig Island was just brilliant, Skin was all right, and this, the Treatment, is good. But maybe not one for the parents of small children.

It's the second in this Jack Caffery series, and I think reading Birdman (the first) might be a waste of time now as I'm assuming a lot of the crime referred to in this book is actually the mystery from Birdman (?? I might be wrong of course!). So we've got detective Jack Caffery, an alcoholic (although no one says he's an alcoholic, considering the amount of drink he and his girlfriend put away during this book, how can they be anything but?) and messed up guy is investigating the latest mystery. Caffery is messed up as his brother was abducted when he was a young boy. They never found out what happened, but he has decided to live in his parents' house, and be teased by the local peodophile about his little brother. Living in a nightmarish limbo.

So him dealing with the memory of his little brother, and also the repercussions of the last crime (I am assuming Birdman), he's now looking for a missing child. The parents were found near death in their house, with signs of abuse, strange ritualistic behaviour and general unpleasantness left in the house - seemingly held captive by a nutter who then ran off with their young son. And the question is, is the nutter going to strike again...?

**Spoilers** whilst this is all going on, the peodophile who teases him commits suicide, and leaves Caffery a map to his peodophile stash, which in turns leads him on to a hunt to find out what happened to his brother all those years ago. This is just a really sad storyline because he comes SO close to finding out - and knowing perhaps would have allowed him to let all those ghosts and worries rest. We do actually find out what happened. And the woman involved, who tries to blackmail Caffery in exchange for telling him the truth, winds him up so much that he ends up just walking away instead, and leaving her in custody. And without knowing it, he kills his brother there and then. Perhaps an unknowing mercy killing, because his brother would have been better off dying all those years ago when he was abducted, but even so, it is very bitter that in effect Caffery seals his brother's fate to starve to death, because his brother is tied up, the only person who knows where he is, is locked up, and Caffery won't listen to what she has to say. So it's all just sad all round.

Very gritty, real, grim stuff.

I am sending this to a bookmoocher in Dresden, Germany.