Monday, December 26, 2016

A Terrible Beauty

Detective Superintendent Katie Maguire has been called out to a farm where the skeletons of several people have been discovered where a new foundation is being excavated.  The pathology team discover something weird, a doll-like figure attached to the thigh bones.  Is it a mass execution or individual burials?  And, why are the bones all jumbled about?

Dr. Reidy, the pathologist, informs Maguire that the bones have been buried for quite some time.  They are all female and the flesh was scraped off of the bones.  Does this suggest cannibalism?  Possibly.

Maguire is given an oral history of the killings which occurred back just prior to the Easter Uprising.  She sets DI Liam Fennessy to researching the missing women and also checking if they might have any living relatives for DNA comparisons.  Further research points to an ancient cult.  Despite being told that the case is shelved due to its age, and being handed another more current one to attend to, Maguire continues to work on the case.

It isn't long after this that the same farmer makes a grisly discovery.  A body that has been mutilated in the same manner, with body parts being attacked by crows.  It doesn't take long to identify the victim, and her track through Ireland up until she disappeared.  Now to find the killer.

Seemingly to have caught the killer, Maguire is hesitant to announce that they have him when another girl goes missing.

Author Graham Masterton has written an horrifying murder mystery.  Just when you think you know who the killer is, another potential suspect is presented.  I had selected this book on the basis of it being a murder mystery, but after reading it, I realise that it really is a book of the horror genre.  This is not a book for the squeamish.

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