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The Last Temptation
 
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The Last Temptation (Hardcover)

by Val McDermid (Author)
3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 431 pages
  • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd (4 Feb 2002)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 000226109X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0002261098
  • Product Dimensions: 23.9 x 15.5 x 4.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 153,468 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #33 in  Books > Crime, Thrillers & Mystery > Authors, A-Z > M > McDermid, Val

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review
Val McDermid just gets better and better. The Last Temptation is intelligent about undercover police work and psychological profiling as well as moving on the human cost to the people who have to do society's dirty work.

We are back with profiler Tony Hills and super-competent cop Carol, who we met in The Mermaids Singing and The Wire in the Blood. The couple's past experiences have created a bond between them as well as a certain inability to bear the sight of each other. They are brought back into co-operation by the needs of the job in its European dimension. Tony is persuaded to help track a European killer who drowns and mutilates psychologists, while Carol is working undercover to trap a drug trafficker whose dead lover spookily resembles her.

As always, McDermid writes brilliant criminals. She adds that deadening of sympathy which makes horror possible. Both aristocratic gangster Tadeusz and vengeful psychotic Mann have their reasons for being who they are, doing what they do. McDermid makes us care that her detectives succeed and survive just that little bit more than we care for her villains to escape. She writes excellent thrillers simply because she has a journalist's eye for both sides of each case. --Roz Kaveney

Review
'McDermid's capacity to enter the warped mind of a deviant criminal is shiveringly convincing' Marcel Berlins, The Times Praise for Killing the Shadows: 'Good pace, enough blood to make us feel that murder is far from cold and clinical, and, best of all, characters you believe in' Maeve Binchy, Mail on Sunday 'The plotting is impeccable, the atmosphere palpable, and I doubt that it will be surpassed this year' Graham Caveney, Sunday Express

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Customer Reviews

19 Reviews
5 star:
 (5)
4 star:
 (7)
3 star:
 (4)
2 star:
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Average Customer Review
3.6 out of 5 stars (19 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
34 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Hunters Become The Prey, 2 Feb 2002
We are all Europeans now, but that does not stop cross boundary suspicion among police forces when a serial killer is using the waterways of Germany and the Netherlands to target his victims. At the same time Carol Jordan is cajoled into going underground to trap a particularly nasty trafficker in drugs and illegal immegrants, with the carrot of a top European job if she succeeds.

How these two disperate stories are woven together is the genius of Val McDermid, her writing getting stronger by the book. This is the third Tony Hill/Carol Jordan book and, with the Wire in the Blood soon to be on our TV screens, she is soon to be catapulted into Rankine status.

What McDermid brings is a truly gruesome modus operendi, matched by a credible pyschological reason for the disturbed mind behind it. She creates not monsters, but damaged characters who are all the more scary for it.

Tony Hill and Carol Jordan use professional detachment to avoid intimacy; their struggle against their emotions rumbles like a volcano beneath the major plot lines. The closer they get together the more they put themselves at risk. The risk is not just that they might have to reveal vulnerable aspects to one another, but that this "weakness" will be exploited by some very nasty characters indeed.

Powerful, dark and gripping, The Last Temptation is not for the nervous. It will make you think and it will lose you sleep.

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Good - but not quite great, 19 Nov 2002
By A Customer
There is just something missing to make this a great book but it is a riveting read and the description of the policework in Holland and Germany was fascinating. There is the feeling that the author suddenly tired of the book and it ends rather abruptly and it is difficult to believe that a seasoned policewoman would make such an elementary mistake. That being said it is a book which is difficult to put down and in Tony Hill we have a character who is flawed in a way which is not usual in this genre (i.e. the failed marriage, workaholic, borderline alcoholic cliché). I enjoyed this book and look forward to reading the next, it will be interesting to see if the author will come back to Hill an Jordan and where they can go from here.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but not her best., 26 Feb 2002
By A Customer
I can assure one of the previous reviewsers that Val MCDermid is definitely not an over-hyped novelist. Some of her previous books have been absolutely stunners. Absolute stunners. (I am thinking in particular of The Mermaids Singing, the Wire in the Blood, A Place of Execution, and the sublime Killing the Shadows.) However, this one does not compare as well as some of the others.

Firstly, the undercover side was all well and good, but it dominated the plot far too much. and as a result what was actually a really decent premise of a serial killer plot was left as a secondary plot and remained slightly underdevloped. I simply did not care to read a novel dominated by Carol going under cover. It wasn't that it wasn't interesting, it was just that i would really have preferred (as i think another reviewer has said) much more concentration on the serial killer aspect. I would rather have had the entire book about the serial killer, as it had superb possibility and potential, but she failed to bring it out. Actually, i am very disappointed. I was expecting a lot more. A tense serial killer thriller, when instead i got a novel about someone going undercover to catch an underdeveloped and not at all menacing villain. It's a great shame. had she concentrated a lot more on the other aspect of the plot, then this book may well have turned out as one of her best. And even though i am extremely disappointed, i can still say that a disappointing Val McDermid book is still much better than anything else currently on the market. Hence the four stars.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Val McDermid
Once again Val McDermid produced an excellent thrill ride for readers. The characters are all believable. The characters have all the human failings and qualities we all have.
Published 3 months ago by M. Hunter

5.0 out of 5 stars McDermid's - Temptation
The Last Temptation is a brilliant read, essential for any reader of the first two Dr.Tony Hill & D.C.I. Carol Jordan books! Read more
Published 17 months ago by Ms. A. J. Airey

1.0 out of 5 stars Flat and boring
I have read three other Val McDermid novels and really enjoyed them. Good plots and some tight writing. But I stopped reading this one after 150 pages. Read more
Published 19 months ago by D. P. Mankin

4.0 out of 5 stars better than the last!
This is the 3rd in the series involving characters Dr Tony Hill and DCI Carol Jordan.
I found this a better read than the last one but still not as good as the first... Read more
Published 21 months ago by F. Luchetti

3.0 out of 5 stars Didn't blow me away
It was good and readable and I didn't kind of end up caring about the characters but it wasn't the best or the most gripping i have ever read.
Published 22 months ago by kimmy

4.0 out of 5 stars Exciting, interesting and enjoyable
This book is definately one I found to be a good read.
I came across Val McDermid a couple of years ago through a £1 per book offer being run by WHSmith and The Times and... Read more
Published on 3 Jun 2007 by Janie U

4.0 out of 5 stars The Last Temptation
"The Last Temptation" is the third in the Dr Tony Hill and DCI Carol Jordan series of books following on from "The Wire in the Blood" and "The Mermaids Singing"

This time Carol... Read more

Published on 26 Sep 2005 by Rich Milligan

2.0 out of 5 stars Won't be tempted to buy a Val McDermid again
Great story idea, well developed, written better than many in this genre, and the serial killer plot was compelling. Read more
Published on 8 Jul 2004 by Arch Stanton

4.0 out of 5 stars Continued Excellence
Again we are taken into the mysterious minds of serial killers guided by the wonderfull Tony Hill And Carol Jordan, the duo continue to keep you on the edge of your seat. Read more
Published on 28 Jun 2004 by Miss L M Scott

3.0 out of 5 stars The Last temptation
The story is basically good but you can always see where it's going. Although it holds a few surprises the plot is quite simple. Read more
Published on 28 May 2003

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