When the decomposed body of a young woman is found,it appears that she’s committed suicide -- and that’s howthe police want to leave it. But DI Jack Caffery isn’t sure: he’son the trail of a predator, and for the first time in a long timehe feels scared. Police diver Flea Marley is beginning to wonderwhether her relationship with Caffery could go beyond theprofessional -- until a discovery that changes everything. Thistime not even Caffery can help her. MO HAYDER is the author of the internationally bestselling novels Birdman, The Treatment, The Devil of Nanking, Pig Island, Ritual, Skin, Gone —which won the 2012 Edgar Award for best novel— Hanging Hill and Poppet . In 2011, she received the Crime Writers’ Association Dagger in the Library award. She lives in the Cotswolds, England. WEB: www.mohayder.net FACEBOOK: AuthorMoHayder From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by by Patrick Anderson Too little action is not the usual problem in popular fiction; the problem is too much. Not wanting to lose the impatient reader, writers toss in everything but the kitchen sink. That is more or less what happens in Mo Hayder's "Skin," which kept me baffled much of the way. The novel is set in and around Bristol, England, and features Detective Inspector Jack Caffery and police Sgt. Phoebe (Flea) Marley, who were introduced in Hayder's earlier novel "Ritual." There is a hint of sexual attraction between the two, although Caffery claims to have sworn off women after several failed relationships. The first time Caffery and Marley meet in this novel, we're told that he "glanced at her breasts," whereupon this exchange follows: "I saw that." "Couldn't help myself. Sorry." "You're my senior officer. You're not supposed to look at me like that." It turns out that Marley was just having fun: "She liked the way Caffery had looked at her breasts. As if the T-shirt wasn't even there." There isn't much time for this sort of banter, however, because a bewildering number of bodies starts piling up and demanding our heroes' full attention. Marley is a police diver, and in an opening scene we see her in a flooded limestone quarry, diving deeper than she's supposed to, not finding a corpse but glimpsing something dark, the size of a big turtle, but with human feet. Both she and Caffery, it seems, think there is a "Tokoloshe" in the area, a creature out of African witchcraft. We see Caffery watching a video of a man being decapitated with a hacksaw, apparently by people who can sell the head for medicinal uses. We accompany Caffery as he talks with a mysterious figure called the Walking Man, who may or may not be human. We learn that a young woman named Misty Kitson is missing. Two other young women are found dead, apparent suicides. Soon, however, Caffery suspects that both were murdered. Marley has troubles closer to home. One day she notices a smell in the back of her car, opens the trunk and finds Kitson's body. It seems that Marley's worthless brother, having borrowed her car, accidentally ran down Kitson and inexplicably brought the corpse home. Against her better judgment, Marley decides to help her brother avoid punishment. Her reward: Her brother and his nasty wife concoct a story that will put the blame on Marley. Trying to prove her innocence, Marley encounters a woman who crusades to protect wildlife from motorists and is soon blackmailing the bedeviled police diver. Meanwhile, Caffery is investigating the possible murder victims. One of them left her husband, collected sex toys and seems to have been blackmailing someone before her death. Caffery's inquiries about another victim, a nurse, take him closer to the serial killer he believes to be at large, and when he finally confronts the killer, "Skin" becomes focused and suspenseful. But even then we have a letdown. Caffery gets out of a tight spot from which there is no obvious escape -- not due to his own cleverness but by something close to a miracle. One can only hope that further outings by Caffery and Marley will be less murky and far-fetched than this one. bookworld@washpost.com Copyright 2010, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. *Starred Review* Tired of all those lame vampire and goth horror books? Ready for something really scary? This is it. Easily today’s best writer of visceral and elemental horror, Hayder handles her genre specialty in a way guaranteed to creep out even the strongest of heart. No Lovecraftian excesses here. Hayder writes about monsters that could be real, yanked from some dank recess of the id. This combo of police procedural and African mythology continues the story from her earlier novel Ritual (2008) and marks the fourth appearance of Detective Inspector Jack Caffery and forensic diver “Flea” Marley. The enigmatic monster dubbed the Tokoloshe is also back and intertwined into a murder mystery that may, or may not, involve the supernatural. What it definitely does involve is someone or something that like