Bestselling author whose fascination with death and violence found expression in the Jack Caffery crime novels
In her mid-20s, while working as a hostess in a Tokyo nightclub, the author Mo Hayder, who has died aged 59, saw the lives of three strangers snuffed out in quick succession. A heart attack in a coffee bar; a workman falling to his death; a snakebite.
These close-up brushes with mortality, shortly after the murder of one friend and the brutal rape of another, sparked a fascination with death and with violence against women that would last a lifetime. Later, while working as a film-maker, Mo produced an animated short in which a cute Claymation couple went to bed together before the woman pulled the man’s head off, ate it and lobbed the skull out of the window. The film won an award, but the local TV station refused to show it, on the grounds that they did not agree with cannibalism.
