Synopses & Reviews
There were thirteen crime-scene pictures. Dead faces set in grimaces and shouts. Faces howling, whistling, moaning, crying, hissing. Hazel pinned them to the wall and stood back. It was a silent opera of ghosts.Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef has lived all her days in the small town of Port Dundas and is now making her way toward retirement with something less than grace. Hobbled by a bad back and a dependence on painkillers, and feeling blindsided by divorce after nearly four decades of marriage, sixty-one-year-old Hazel has only the constructive criticism of her old goat of a mother and her own sharp tongue to buoy her. But when a terminally ill Port Dundas woman is gruesomely murdered in her own home, Hazel and her understaffed department must spring to life. And as one terminally ill victim after another is foundtheir bodies drained of blood, their mouths sculpted into strange shapesHazel finds herself tracking a truly terrifying serial killer across the country while everything she was barely holding together begins to spin out of control.
Through the cacophony of her bickering staff, her unsupportive superiors, a clamoring press, the towns rumor mill, and her own nagging doubts, Hazel can sense the dead trying to call out. But what secret do they have to share? And will she hear it before its too late?
In The Calling, Inger Ash Wolfe brings a compelling new voice and an irresistible new heroine to the mystery world.
Review
"Whether this novel is a thriller, mystery or police procedural, or a combination of all three genres, it is original and suspenseful." "The story is gripping, with a tight plot, packed with shivering descriptions and taut writing." Sent to: Amazon.com and Indie Next [www.bookweb.org/indiebound, formerly Book Sense/ABA], and will appear in the next issue of I Love a Mystery [iloveamysterynewsletter.com]. It will thereafter be posted on DorothyL and 4MA [For Mystery Addicts] and should appear [online] in the NoName Cafe Book Review Corner [www.LorieHam.com] and Spinetingler Magazine [www.spinetinglermag.com/reviews/home.html] and, in print and online, in Mystery Women [www.mysterywomen.co.uk], Crimespree Magazine and in Midwest Book Review's "Reviewer's Bookwatch" [under "Theodore's Bookshelf"].
Synopsis
When terminally ill patients are found gruesomely murdered in Port Dundas, Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef finds herself tracking a truly terrifying serial killer across the country, while everything she had been barely holding together begins to spin out of control. Harcourt
Synopsis
Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef is having a bad year. After major back surgery, she has no real option but to move into her ex-husbands basement and suffer the humiliation of his new wife bringing her meals down on a tray. As if that werent enough, Hazels octogenarian mother secretly flushes Hazels stash of painkillers down the toilet. Its almost a relief when Hazel gets a call about a body fished up by tourists in one of the lakes near Port Dundas. But what raises the hair on the back of Micallef s neck is that the local paper has just published the first installment of a serialized story featuring such a scenario. Even before they head out to the lake with divers to recover the body, she and DC James Wingate, leading the police detachment in Micallef s absence, know they are being played. But its not clear who is pulling their strings and why, nor is what they find at the lake at all what they expected. Its Micallef herself who is snared, caught up in a cryptic game devised by someone who knows how to taunt her into opening a cold case, someone who knows that nothing will stop her investigation. The second novel featuring Hazel Micallef, “a compelling, unlikely hero” (Entertainment Weekly), is a stunning and suspenseful exploration of the obsessive far reaches of love, confirming Inger Ash Wolfe as one of the best mystery writers today.
Synopsis
Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef is having a bad year. After major back surgery, she moves into her ex-husbands home to be cared for by his new wife. As if that werent enough to cope with, her octogenarian mother is insisting that Hazel end her dependence on painkillersan insistence that takes the form of secretly flushing Hazels stash down the toilet.
Its almost a relief when Hazel gets a call about a body found in one of the lakes near Port Dundas. But what raises the hair on the back of her neck is that the local paper has just published the first installment of a serialized story featuring such a scenario. Even before they head out to the lake, she and Detective Constable James Wingate know they are being played. But who is pulling their strings and why are not clear, nor is what they find at the lake at all what they expected. This is no simple drowning accident or even a straightforward murder. Its Micallef herself who is snared, caught up in a cryptic game being played by a maven of the art of deception.
Synopsis
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR
THE CALLING"The Calling had me from the first page and never let me go. I absolutely loved Hazel Micallef."Kate Atkinson, bestselling author of Case Histories and One Good Turn
"The Calling is a wonderful, creepy and suspenseful novel with enough twists and compelling characters to make you want to devour it all at one sitting."Peter Robinson, author of the Inspector Banks novels
"The Calling is that rare unplug-the-phone, skip-all-meals, ignore-your-bedtime thriller. Its twisty, sharp and very, very creepyand Det. Hazel Micallef is a perfectly original charmer."Gillian Flynn, author of Sharp Objects
About the Author
INGER ASH WOLFE is the pseudonym for a North American literary novelist.