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'The book [has] a sense of gravitas and intelligence utterly beyond lesser writers in the field … This is a wholly satisfying read which cleverly subverts tradition and expectation’ Ian Rankin, Scotland on Sunday
'This is a shocking book, stunningly exciting, horrifyingly good. It is so convincing that one fears reality may be like this and these events the awful truth' Ruth Rendell
'The Wire in the Blood is truly frightening, McDermid's capacity to enter the warped mind of a deviant criminal is shiveringly convincing … Tony Hill, driven and disturbed, is an appealing and original character. This is a writer who just gets better and better' The Times
'Terrific chiller from Manchester's answer to Thomas Harris … Thank God for Tony Hill and psychological profiling' Guardian
'Val McDermid is an accomplished storyteller, and this scary, fast-moving tale is engrossing' Daily Telegraph
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Val McDermid’s Number One bestselling crime series, featuring psychological profiler Dr Tony Hill and Jacko Vance – protagonist of new novel THE RETRIBUTION – in the suspenseful and ferociously readable thriller that led to the much-loved TV show.
Young girls are disappearing around the country, and there is nothing to connect them to one another, let alone the killer whose charming manner hides a warped and sick mind.
Dr Tony Hill, head of the new National Profiling Task Force, sets his team an exercise: they are given the details of missing teenagers and asked to discover any possible links between the cases. Only one officer comes up with a theory – a theory that is ridiculed by the group … until one of their number is murdered and mutilated.
For Tony Hill, the murder becomes a matter for personal revenge and, joined by colleague Carol Jordan, he embarks on a campaign of psychological terrorism – a game where hunter and hunted can all too easily be reversed.
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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.
While I still think that The Mermaids Singing has the edge this is another great book.
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.
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