The Treatment (novel)

The Treatment is a 2001 novel by British crime-writer Mo Hayder. The novel is based around the theme of pedophilia and it won the WH Smith Thumping Great Read Award in 2002. It features her protagonist DI Jack Caffery.

Plot

A husband and wife are discovered imprisoned in their own home near Brockwell Park in South London. It is a hot summer and they are badly dehydrated, they've been bound and beaten, and the husband seems close to death. Rory Peach, their 8-year-old son, is missing. Detective Inspector (DI) Jack Caffery is one of the police team and the disappearance of the little boy rekindles memories of his brother Ewan who was abducted as a 9-year-old and never seen again.

Caffery tries to find the boy at the same time as helping his girl friend get over her own sexual attack and following up on clues which might allow him to find out Ewan's fate. Patterns of child sexual abuse start to emerge and Caffery tracks down a young man who was abused in the same park many years earlier as a child. Caffery is convinced the attacker will be targeting another family and when Rory's body is discovered and DNA from semen proves to be Rory's father Alek, the case is turned on its head. Bite marks on the boy's shoulder, however, do not match Alek's dental pattern and Caffery then understands that Peach was forced to sodomise his son.

Another family with a young boy, 8-year-old Josh, has been imprisoned and Caffery slowly pieces together the clues to find out who they are. Caffery also gets very close to discovering that his brother is still alive. He suffered brain damage at the hands of a vicious child molester, a member of a paedophile ring who hand children round and make child pornography videos.

External links

• The Treatment page at official website
• Review from The Guardian
• Review from The Observer
• Review from The Telegraph
• Article from The Guardian