The Calling - by Inger Ash Wolfe (Paperback)

About the Book

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

Book Synopsis

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 found--their bodies drained of blood, their mouths sculpted into strange shapes--Hazel 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 town's 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 it's too late?

In The Calling, Inger Ash Wolfe brings a compelling new voice and an irresistible new heroine to the mystery world.

From the Back Cover

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR THE CALLING

"The Callinghad 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. It s twisty, sharp and very, very creepy and Det. Hazel Micallef is a perfectly original charmer." Gillian Flynn, author of Sharp Objects

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Review Quotes

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].
--Theodore Feit "Freelance Reviewer" (3/30/2009 12:00:00 AM)

About the Author

INGER ASH WOLFE is the pseudonym for a North American literary novelist.