The tagline of Skin really put me off.

You have something this killer wants… SKIN.

Ew.

Every time Mo Hayder wrote about this creepy, creepy man, sitting in his house in the country, aching to stretch a woman’s skin over a tanning bench, I felt a little bit sick.

Luckily, this took up only a fraction of the book.  The bulk of it follows Flea and Jack, two police officers in Bristol, trying to solve a series of murders, posed to look like suicides.  While Jack tries to convince his superiors that the suicides aren’t what they seem, the entire police force has been mobilised to search for an actress who vanished outside her rehab clinic late one night.  The (dead) actress soon shows up, but only Flea knows where she is, and she definitely isn’t talking.  But what do you do with a dead body that has been decomposing in your car for three days?  What do the suicide/murders have in common?  And why do Flea and Jack keep getting the feeling they are being followed by something less than human?

Very gripping stuff.  Only a little bit sick inducing – no worse than an episode of CSI.

Skin by Mo Hayder