Nobody
moves around inside the messy heads of serial killers like Dr Tony
Hill. Now heading up the recently founded National Profiling Task
Force, he sets his team an exercise: they are given the details
of thirty missing teenagers and asked to use their new techniques
to discover whether there is a sinister link between any of the
cases. Only one officer comes up with a concrete theory, but it
is ridiculed by the rest of her group ... until a killer murders
and mutilates one of their number.
Could
the outrageous suspicion possibly be true? For Tony Hill, the murder
of a member of his team becomes a matter for personal revenge. Aided
by his previous colleague, Carol Jordan, he embarks upon a campaign
of psychological terrorism - a game of cat and mouse where the roles
of hunter and hunted are all too easily reversed.
Reviews:
Ruth Rendell
'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.'
The Times, Marcel
Berlins
'The Wire in the Blood is truly frightening, McDermid's capacity
to enter the warped mind of a deviant criminal is shiveringly
convincing, and she is equally adept at portraying the interactions,
allegiances and petty jealousies that exist among the investigators.
Hill, driven and disturbed, is an appealing and original character.
This is a writer who just gets better and better.'
Independent, Andrew Taylor
'Tense and shocking.'
Sunday Times, John Dugdale
'The novel has the same compelling combination of sexual-political
mischief and Jacobean psychological intensity that earned the
author the crime novel of the year award for The Mermaids Singing.',
Mail on Sunday, Frances
Fyfield
'Tension-filled sequel to The Mermaids Singing The story,
handled with verve, wit and style, never flags'
Colin Dexter
'Ye Gods, she's good'
Guardian, Lucretia Stewart
'Terrific chiller from Manchester's answer to Thomas Harris.
Val McDermid can do what the Americans do so effortlessly - get
inside the mind of a serial killer. Thank God for Tony Hill and
psychological profiling.'
Scotland
on Sunday, Ian Rankin
'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. Having
already awarded her previous Tony Hill novel a Gold Dagger, someone
better be smelting the platinum.'
Express on Sunday, Julie Carpenter
'McDermid is no novice at tense thriller writing and it shows.
Her handling is sly and sophisticated, weaving the mundane with
the stomach-churningly depraved.'
New Woman
'Intelligent, convincing and compelling, The Wire in the
Blood takes risks with plot and character, undercutting all the
normal devices of thriller structure in a highly readable and
scary book.'
Daily Telegraph
'Val McDermid is an accomplished storyteller, and this scary,
fast-moving tale is engrossing.'
