mlle teapot

Jack finally learns what happened to Ewan. And that his doing the right thing, by surrendering the tapes to convict Tracy, led to his brother's agonising death. It's awful, but I don't think anyone was expecting a happy ending for Jack.

The mystery plot was good, although nothing as memorable as Birdman or The Treatment. I saw the Lucia twist coming, but then again, this is a book about Jack, with the crime as a background. It did feel a bit anti-climatic for a series ending but after having to skip 4 books because they were not about the main character, I welcome the change. 

There are sweet moments, like his care for Mrs Frink and Amy deciding to be a policewoman to put bad guys in jail, and it felt weirdly wholesome that Jack (alcoholic, ageing, jaded, unable to sustain a relationship of any kind, prone to violence Jack) could inspire, although unknowingly, something like. There are bittersweet moments, like the vaping and the random muscle pains, because our main character is closer to 50, and he needs glasses now. There are silly moments, like all women wanting, at some point, to bang Jack or having random thoughts about how he must be good in bed - and we are shown that he is. 

As always, the prose is terse and twisty, the action tense, the world a miserable place. Less gruesome than other cases, it's still a good one. 

This book's perp, the Troll, is probably one of the most disgusting villains I've ever read, and not only because he targets children and forces their fathers to do the unthinkable. He, as a person, is disgusting on a visceral level. Schizophrenic and convinced that the presence of female hormones is to blame for his impotence, the Troll devised a "treatment" to counteract it.

The book feels sticky. Full of urine, saliva, sweat, and fluids. It's gross in the most basic sense of it. Hayder misdirects us by placing us in the Troll's mind, and because he is insane, we find ourselves lost in it.

The crime is also connected, although tangentially, to Ewan's disappearance, and Penderacki's ghost (literally) haunts the narrative and the main character.

A year after the Birdman case, Jack finds himself living with Rebecca and, unsurprisingly, restless and unhappy. She is not processing her trauma from Malcolm's attack, and Jack, who can barely function in relation to other humans in normal times, is unravelling thanks to the case and Penderacki's suicide, which left him with a box full of CSAM evidence and the hope/dread of finding out about Ewan. The resolution to that plotline is one of the most soul-destroying ones I've read.

Some things interested me here: the impossible choice the Troll forces the fathers to make, the cycle of abuse we see in Tracey Lamb, the mothers who are willing to destroy their bodies to try to help their children, and, of course, Jack losing his mind and his morals when it comes to Tracey. The immense tragedy of the consequences of his actions when he chooses to give the evidence up and keep her in jail, even if he doesn't ever find out what happened to Ewan. The fact that his choice, the moral choice, has a horrifying consequence is a testament to the asphyxiating bleakness of this book.

And the elephant in the room: Jack rapes Rebecca. There is no way around it. The narrative doesn't make any excuses for it, and neither does Jack. He knows what he did, and he calls it as it is. And while in other books this would lead to a redemption arc or an exemplary punishment, The Treatment does it differently. Jack, Rebecca and the reader know that he committed an unforgivable act, but life goes on, with the characters a bit more broken, a bit more hopeless.

The crime in itself is brutal and disgusting, and the author doesn't mince the details. I really liked the procedural aspects and the detailed descriptions of the forensic inquest, but it's not for everyone. Hayder doesn't fade to black, not during the autopsies, not during the murders, not when we are in the criminals' heads.

The pacing is addicting but not too fast that it feels rushed. And the criminal case is woven into the main character's life. And, in my opinion, that is the strongest point of the book: DI Jack Caffery.

Jack is a detective in his mid-thirties who, as expected, has a dark past full of trauma; he can't sustain a romantic relationship and is a borderline alcoholic. He refuses to leave his childhood home, from where his brother was abducted over 20 years ago by the pedophile neighbour. Jack keeps his and his brother's old room ("Ewan's room") filled with files and stuff he had scavenged from the neighbour's trash. He is obsessed.

He is also smart and dogged, a profiler who is attractive enough that all women in the story want him on some level. (Mo Hayder mentioned at the end of the third book that she was surprised and yet not that so many readers find Jack sexy, but that is the default mode for any heterosexual woman in the books, too.)

On paper, he sounds flat, but Hayder is talented enough to make him human, both in his flaws (and he has many) and in his virtues. Jack feels real, and I could not help but feel for him and empathise with him. He'll get worse as the series progresses, but I still couldn't look away from him.