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The Calling | 
 enlarge | Author: Inger Ash Wolfe
Publisher: Harcourt
Category: Book
List Price: $24.00
Buy New: $8.08
You Save: $15.92 (66%)
New (38) Collectible (1) from $8.08
Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 31727
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.5
ISBN: 0151013470
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780151013470
ASIN: 0151013470
Publication Date: May 5, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: BRAND NEW PUBLISHER'S EDITION, unopened, clean and tight.
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Product Description
There were thirteen crime-scene pictures. Dead faces set in grimaces and shouts. Faces howling, whistling, moaning, crying, hissing. Hazel pinned them to the wall and stood back. It was a silent opera of ghosts. Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef has lived all her days in the small town of Port Dundas and is now making her way toward retirement with something less than grace. Hobbled by a bad back and a dependence on painkillers, and feeling blindsided by divorce after nearly four decades of marriage, sixty-one-year-old Hazel has only the constructive criticism of her old goat of a mother and her own sharp tongue to buoy her. But when a terminally ill Port Dundas woman is gruesomely murdered in her own home, Hazel and her understaffed department must spring to life. And as one terminally ill victim after another is found—their bodies drained of blood, their mouths sculpted into strange shapes—Hazel finds herself tracking a truly terrifying serial killer across the country while everything she was barely holding together begins to spin out of control. Through the cacophony of her bickering staff, her unsupportive superiors, a clamoring press, the town’s rumor mill, and her own nagging doubts, Hazel can sense the dead trying to call out. But what secret do they have to share? And will she hear it before it’s too late? In The Calling, Inger Ash Wolfe brings a compelling new voice and an irresistible new heroine to the mystery world.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Someone call Helen Mirren - have we got a part for her June 22, 2008
Summary, no spoilers:
At the beginning of this book, we are introduced to Hazel Micallef, the chief of police in a small town in Ontario, Canada. She is 61, divorced, and she lives with her feisty and funny 87 year old mother, Emily, the former mayor of this town.
Hazel's police duties usually involve her dealing with small town antics, but she now finds herself investigating the gruesome death of a local elderly woman - a woman who suffered from cancer, and who also happened to be the woman that Hazel's father had an affair with, years earlier.
Hazel and her small group of officers end up investigating this crime, and find out that it is the work of a serial killer.
In alternating chapters, we get the story told to us, from the point of view of Hazel, the killer, and from the detectives and victims. We also get to read about the competitiveness and jealousy between the different police departments and agencies, and the problems Hazel faces with her own detectives, and the local newspaper editor, as well.
The ending is satisfying, and interesting, albeit with one reservation, which I'll explain, below.
Hazel Micallef is just a terrifc charcter, She is no cardboard cut-out: she's tough, smart, vulnerable, and yet we see her suffer the indigntiies of aging, as well. (She has a bad back, among other things.) Like I said in the heading, I can just see Helen Mirren play her part in any movie version, of this novel.
The only reason this book did not get 5 stars (and I almost gave it 5 stars for Hazel's part alone), was because I had problems with a part of plot - the killer's actions did not seem consistant with his motives. Yes, I know you can argue he's crazy, but this still didn't completely work for me.
I can't say more than that without writing a spoiler. But I do want to say that I did enjoy this book, and I do thouroughly recommend it. I look forward to reading another book by this author, and I have my fingers crossed it will be featuring a certain 61 year old chief of police...
 The Wolfe At The Door June 11, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I finished this book this afternoon and said to someone on Readerville that I haven't been this creeped out by a book since I read a mystery called The Lodger when I was a young teen.
The main character in The Calling, Hazel Micallef, is a 61-year old Detective Inspector in a small town in Canada. She lives with her mother, has two grown daughters and an ex-husband and fights her back pain and her loneliness, but doesn't, until this book opens, have much occasion to fight serious crime. Until one of her town's citizens is murdered...and Micallef and her small team realize that the killer has killed 15 times before...and that he isn't done yet. The killer is a big ole bag of creepy...and Hazel and her crew are all appealing and interesting.
There's a big hoo-haa about this book because Inger Ash Wolfe is a pseudonym...there's lots of speculation as to who she really is. (The main money seems to be on it being Michael Redhill.) I have to say, I don't care who he or she is...I just want more books from this pen. It's a really great read.
"He was a man on a merciful mission." May 18, 2008
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
Inger Ash Wolfe's "The Calling" is a departure from the standard serial killer novel. The heroine is a few years shy of being a senior citizen. She is sixty-one year old Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef, who polices the small Ontario town where she was born, Port Dundas in Westmuir County. Hazel is a real piece of work: She is divorced from Andrew Pedersen after a marriage of thirty-six years and she is not particularly close to her two grown daughters. Because of the excruciating pain brought on by her bad back, she has become dependent on painkillers and alcohol. Of an evening, she will pop a Percocet washed down with a small glass of Bushmills whiskey. Hazel lives with "a force of nature," her eighty-seven year old mother, Emily, the town's former mayor. Emily plays poker with her friends, tries to control Hazel's diet (a typical breakfast is a flavorless egg-white omelet, sprouted whole-grain flax, and high-fiber toast), and is just plain bossy.
Most of the time, Hazel is not called upon to do any serious detective work. After all, her patch is a sleepy little place where nothing much ever happens. She is serving as interim commander because Gord Drury, the former boss, retired and was never replaced. Ian Mason, the head of the Central Division of the Ontario Police Services, "is the worst kind of police bureaucrat: capricious and jolly about it." He would like nothing better than to eliminate the Port Dundas detachment as a cost-cutting move.
Everything changes when a cancer-ridden woman named Delia Chandler is found murdered and mutilated. Her mouth is "rent open in a silent cry." The crime scene is bizarre, with no sign of forced entry. It seems that Delia had welcomed the killer into her home and allowed him to do as he wished. Hazel and her team, including Detective Sergeant Ray Greene, Detective Howard Spere, Detective Constable James Wingate, and Detective Sergeant Adjutor Sevigny, are on the trail of a most unusual criminal who is both clever and methodical. Adding to their troubles, the police must cope with an impatient press and panicked townspeople who are demanding quick results. When evidence turns up indicating that a serial killer who targets the terminally ill is on the loose, Hazel fears that may be in way over her head. In her desperation to solve the case, she ignores standard procedure, conducting her investigation (some of which falls outside her jurisdiction) on her own and in secret, and withholding vital information from the public. She believes that this case may make her career or destroy it.
Wolfe uses the third person omniscient narrator to tell the story, primarily from Harriet's viewpoint. In addition, she provides a glimpse into the mind of the killer, who calls himself Simon. He is "a phantom in a dark coat" who seems to be a religious fanatic. His twisted agenda impels him to travel across Canada, visiting his victims at their invitation and then dispatching them to the hereafter. The author develops her suspenseful plot with great care. Her descriptive writing is superb; she expertly contrasts the bucolic setting with Simon's disturbing acts of violence.
The characters are beautifully delineated. Hazel is a formidable but flawed woman with a dry sense of humor. She is a technophobe who hates cell phones and computers, but is also a savvy investigator who uses whatever tools are needed (both people and computers, as it turns out) to find the perpetrator. Greene, Harriet's deputy, has always been loyal to her, but as time passes, he becomes uncomfortable with her unorthodox "buffet style policing." Detective Constable Wingate has great instincts; he offers valuable insight and a mature perspective that is unusual in someone so young. Simon is a bizarre villain who does not fit the usual stereotypes. He is careful, extremely organized, and highly intelligent. "His touchstones were patience and preparation." But who is he really? Is he a psychotic angel of death, a mercy killer, or a combination of both? What exactly is his agenda and can Harriet arrest him before he completes his "mission" and disappears forever? As it turns out, nothing is simple in "The Calling." Inger Ash Wolfe has written an original and nightmarish police procedural that demonstrates just how difficult and frustrating detective work can be. As Hazel says so eloquently, "Nothing, not even a life in law enforcement, could prepare you for the wild imaginings some people, in their passionate madness, could unleash."
"It was a place where death was somehow equivalent to life." May 3, 2008
20 out of 21 found this review helpful
Personal redemption comes in many disguises and never when expected. In this off-beat mystery that hides a powerful theme behind the distracting horrors of a serial killer. Rural Port Dundas, Ontario, is the setting for a number of obscure deaths, all unlinked until a cancer-riddled elderly victim comes to the attention of Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef, her small, understaffed force unprepared for a monster who has walked the streets of Point Dundas, leaving his evil stench behind. Of course, the killer does not think of himself as evil, merely assisting the final transition from life to death as his willing victims cooperate in their own dramas. What happens to these bodies afterwards defies the imagination, a bizarre ritual based on the murderer's obsessions. Traveling the countryside for his appointments with death, the "mercy" killer remains nearly invisible, leaving his gruesome corpses behind as a testament to the fleeting nature of life.
Only gradually does Micallef see a pattern emerging; with no real support from her superiors, Hazel patches together an investigative network, assembling the details of the atrocities of a misbegotten angel of death who continues to evade authorities. Hazel has more on her plate than this serial killer, bedeviled by agonizing pain in her lower back that may soon require surgery, a sprightly octogenarian mother who strictly organizes her sixty-one year old daughter's diet and brooks no challenges to her authority and the lingering sadness of a divorce after four decades of marriage. In spite her troubles, Hazel is content in her work, ensconced in the easy familiarity of a place she known all her life. As the investigation ratchets up with more dead bodies, so does the tension between the Detective Inspector and her quarry, although neither has yet named the enemy or considered how their worlds might collide. By its nature, their relationship is adversarial, although Hazel's reactions are far more predictable than the desiccated aberrations of the killer.
It is Hazel's unexpected journey through a problematic investigation that ultimately proves her mettle, her job threatened by mistakes made in the heat of the moment and a quest to wreak revenge on a man who has stolen one of the most precious people in her life. A complicated case becomes a struggle between good and evil, a reckoning with false pride and the mischief of ego: "You're pride masquerading as justice." With characters too complex to be easily defined, The Calling explores more than the obvious, Hazel finally face to face with her purest self, honed by extremity and purified by desperation. I find that I appreciate this novel far more after I have finished, aware that the building tension is not sustained until the final chapters, when all comes together in perfect symmetry. Luan Gaines/ 2008.
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