The Wire in the Blood [Paperback]

Val McDermid is one of the very best thriller writers of our time, and although I have only recently finished reading this 1997 novel, it must rank as representative of VM at the peak of her abilities. Wire in the Blood is really hard to fault, and it's one of the very few books that I have read that isn't something to do just to pass the time - no, it's worthy of top choice on any list of means of entertainment. Cancel all appointments and read this first, it's amazing value!

Val is confident enough to name the killer on the first page yet develop and sustain tension for the reader until the very last one. Furthermore she has the ability to create and develop several characters that the reader can truly believe in, and build up a sense of strong like or dislike for more than one. The bad guy is one Jacko Vance, our feelings of hatred for him perhaps cleverly manipulated by the author by way of his iconic status as an adored public hero within the context of the story. The question is how will he be stopped? Fortunately his adversaries are the Hill-Jordan team, which might sound a little Formula One for anybody new to this series but in fact Home Office profiler/psychologist Dr Tony Hill and DCI Carol Jordan are in every sense a well-matched pairing, each with their own wardrobe skeletons and worthy of keen reader attention be they working alone or together. It's perhaps worth mentioning that Tony Hill is possibly the only male character in this story who comes out with any sense of respect or integrity, outnumbered as he is by several shining female roles. Even then, his potential status as Leading Man is undermined by his apparent impotence and subsequent inability to consummate the relationship that exists between he and Carol Jordan, who we assume has no such incapacities. There are more than a few lesbian references or characters which does call to question the accordant leanings of the writer, which I occasionally found distracting, but that's nitpicking in truth - this is a taut, well-paced thriller that makes for a great introduction to anyone new to Val McDermid.

I own all four of the Hill-Jordan novels but unfortunately I have read them in the wrong chronological order...just my luck to begin with the most recent (The Torment of Others), with its references to events in Berlin that I was yet to discover in the third in the series (The Last Temptation). That's what I'm reading right now immediately after finishing Wire in the Blood, and it's every bit as good as the others. Val McDermid is without doubt one of my favourite writers of crime thrillers and I recommend her work unreservedly.

:UPDATE:

Val McDermid has stated that Vance, a TV celebrity with a secret lust for torture, murder and under-age girls who featured in The Wire in the Blood and in two later books, is based on her direct personal experience of interviewing Jimmy Savile

To categorise this as a "Police Profiler" story underestimates the sheer power of Val McDermid's prose. For a UK reader, her domestic locations add a realism missing from the American equivalents.

This is not, however, a cosy English mystery along the lines of Agatha Christie or even Colin Dexter. It is a modern commentary on our willingness to be sucked in by the artificial goodness of media heroes and how we prefer to ignore people of greater intellect than our own on the basis that their insights are somehow suspect.

This is the second of McDermid's longer mature works and proves that the expert command of detail and timing shown in the first was no fluke. Definitely worth full marks.

Dr. Tony Hill has finally put together a team of young, keen profilers. His National Profiling Task Force's first commission is to discover why certain teenagers have gone missing. Though their assignment is supposedly an exercise only, excitement builds within the group when clever, attractive Shaz Bowman comes up with the theory that the crimes have all been committed by famous t.v. personality, Jacko Vance. Vance, the villain of the novel, is plausibly drawn as an important media star who was once a top athlete who lost the use of his arm in a heroic rescue of a lorry driver whose vehicle had been involved in a multiple pile up on a foggy motorway. Vance is a likely serial killer having had a poor childhood, been rebuffed by his fiancee after the accident, and above all being a total control freak. As we learn not only why Vance commits the murders but how in The Mermaid's Singing type of gruesome graphic detail, we are drawn into a world of horror and violence. The fact that we learn early on the identity of the villain moves this novel out of the realm of the whodunit into that of the whydunit and howdunit. McDermid is clearly fascinated by the psychology of her characters and not interested in giving her readers an old-fashioned puzzle to solve. After the mutilation of a member of his group, Hill again teams up with Inspector Carol Jordan who is working in CID in East Yorkshire, encountering all the typical male prejudice of the blunt Yorkshiremen. While Carol helps Tony, she also works to find out who is setting fires in her town, using her own knowledge of a serial offender's signature. The two themes of the efficacy of justice and police efficiency, which are apparent in McDermid's other novels, are also much in evidence in this latest series. Throughout The Wire in the Blood the police are shown as inefficient, blinkered and unwilling to listen to Hill's greater knowledge. The ending of the novel is a fascinating twist, making us question the justice system and our own safety.