Torment of Others [Hardcover]

Val McDermid (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 24, 2004

Stunning new psychological thriller featuring Tony Hill, hero of The Wire in the Blood, from one of Britain's bestselling novelists: 'Val McDermid has become our leading pathologist of everyday evil...The subtle orchestration of terror is masterful' Guardian Clinical psychologist Dr Tony Hill and Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan face the toughest challenge of their careers when they are confronted with an 'impossible' series of murders. Back in Bradfield after her traumatic experiences in Berlin, Carol is surprised to find Tony has followed her there to take up a post in the local secure mental hospital. When a prostitute is murdered in a particularly grotesque and stomach-churning way, she turns to him for help. Bizarrely, this killing matches in every detail a series of murders that took place a couple of years previously. A series of murders for which Derek Tyler was tried, convicted and sentenced. There has never been any doubt about his guilt. But now the ghost of his crimes has risen again. A second prostitute murder soon follows and the team are struggling. While Tony tries to crack Tyler, the police decide to mount an undercover operation that goes horribly wrong.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The latest addition to McDermid's dark and gritty police procedurals, which have become even more popular thanks to the BBC America TV program The Wire in the Blood, finds the series' usual main protagonists, psychologist/profiler Dr. Tony Hill and Det. Chief Insp. Carol Jordan, joined by DI Don Merrick, elevated from the ranks of supporting players. Topping their docket are two serial killers: a child molester who murders and hides his young male victims and the Creeper, who tortures and slays prostitutes using the identical modus operandi of a killer firmly ensconced in a mental facility. McDermid's strength is the engaging and multidimensional characters he creates on both sides of the law. The book was a finalist for the CWA's 2004 Gold Dagger Award, but this audio abridgment is more interested in story than in character. There are several effective set pieces, notably an undercover sting that goes bad, resulting in the abduction and torture of a novice policewoman, and Merrick's life and death struggle with the child predator. At these points, Doyle's competent but undistinguished performance rises to the challenge. But by trimming away the novels' strongest element—its vibrant characters—the abridgment highlights the novel's weakest element: the less than credible sequences leading to the identity and capture of the Creeper.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In the latest in the series starring forensic psychiatrist and criminal profiler Dr. Tony Hill (which has become the basis of a TV series on BBC America), Hill, finishing out a teaching appointment at St. Andrews, finds himself relieved to leave academia for a real case. The Bradfield Metropolitan Police once again seek his advice, this time regarding two missing children, a murdered seven-year-old kidnapped 15 months earlier, and a newly kidnapped eight-year-old. At the same time, a murder victim is discovered, killed in the same fashion as the victims of a man who has been in a mental institution for two years. McDermid is unusual in her ability to keep the suspense high while constructing social mysteries that are far-ranging in their implications--for example, she touches on the societal forces at work today (such as the lack of true neighborhoods) that make it easier for kids to be victimized. One of the most compelling features of this latest entry is the torment that returning Bradfield DCI Carol Jordan (brutally assaulted in the last mystery) feels as she and her team track down the current murderer while she struggles with the memory shards from the last case. McDermid brings to her mysteries an unusual capacity for compassion, both for victims and for the detectives whose lives are shattered tracking down the killers. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 390 pages
• Publisher: Harper Collins (May 24, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0007142889
• ISBN-13: 978-0007142880
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,516,793 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars McDermid finally gets the writing and the creepiness just right, August 17, 2007

By 

J. Fuchs "jax76" (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Torment of Others (Mass Market Paperback)

With apologies to anyone who is reading this as a duplicative review, I am going to review all four of Val McDermid's Dr. Tony Hill/Carol Jordan novels in one place and copy the reviews individually.

I've now read seven of McDermid's books. She's not a great writer but she's a fabulous storyteller and her Tony Hill/Carol Jordan mysteries are the best of the bunch. The first two books aren't written terribly well, but the writing gets better as the series goes on. You may know these characters from the BBC series "Wire in the Blood" starring Robson Green. As an aside, while I generally find film and television adaptations to be far less satisfying than the source material on which they are based, the BBC series is really an exception. While the books have some detail that doesn't make it to the t.v. series, the television program really brings the characters to life and improves on the writing while staying true to the novels, although only the fourth book's plot actually made it to the screen.

As noted by some other reviewers, these books are not for the squeamish. McDermid doesn't pull any punches in writing about vicious psychopaths who commit sex crimes and the books may well be disturbing to many. The second book in particular (more below) actually gave me nightmares. McDermid, however, really gets into the heads of her twisted antagonists and she seems to have done a tremendous amount of research. Most importantly, both Dr. Hill, a clinical psychologist who consults with the police as a profiler, and Carol Jordan, the police officer with whom he works most closely, always feel like real people with investigative abilities and compassion that are easy to admire and foibles that are easy to relate to. They have serious difficulties in forging personal relationships which makes their relationship all the more poignant. Each book focuses on two stories -- a main investigation involving a psychopath and a secondary case that is generally no less compelling, while also following the relationship that develops between the two protagonists. If you've never read any of the books in this series, I would recommend taking them in order. The fourth book is the best, the third the worst, but it's worth reading them in order for the character development (although you could easily skip the third). If you really think you only want to read one, or aren't sure and don't care about spolers, just go straight to the last one. Some people who have read the entire series have found the fourth book repetitive, but it's the one that really works on all levels. Overall, the series gets 4 stars, but here are my individual assessments:

SPOILER FREE REVIEWS

1. The Mermaids Singing - 4 stars


The first of the series is really the only one that delves in any great detail into the personal lives of Tony Hill and Carol Jordan, who come together to investigate the brutal torture and slayings of four men in northern England. McDermid's Tony Hill/Carol Jordan books all deal with issues of sexual identity, but this one does is particularly focused on that as the police suspect a gay man of killing heterosexual men. McDermid shares the thoughts of the killer as well as those of Dr. Hill, who relates all too well to the motivations of the subjects he is asked to profile. The writing in this book is kind of clunky, but the insights of the author into how and why someone sets out to cause maximum pain and humiliation still make it a riveting, if disturbing, read.

2. The Wire in the Blood -- 4 stars


In this second book in the series, teenaged girls are being abducted and brutally raped and tortured to death. We are introduced to an extremely smooth and charismatic character, Jacko Vance, a television celebrity and former star athlete, that Dr. Hill and Carol Jordan called upon to investigate. This is the hardest of the series to read, probably because the killer's victims are all extremely young, naive and female, with no chance whatsoever of fighting back. This book deals with charisma and celebrity as well as sexual deviance and although the writing is still somewhat awkward, it's generally a more compelling novel than the Mermaids Singing.

3. The Last Temptation -- 3 stars

This is the weakest book in the series. On the plus side, McDermid decides to branch out from northern England and take the reader into continental Europe, particularly Germany, where Carol Jordan has gone as an undercover operative to investigate a drug dealer/slave trader. Tony Hill is also in Europe, helping the police solve a series of murders in which psychologists are the victims. McDermid brings to light some of the darker deeds of the Nazis that are generally not known and discussed and for this she should be commended. The writing also starts to improve with this book and the secondary protagonists, two female, European police officers who develop a long-term relationship with each other, are the best of any of the books. There are some serious problems with the novel, however, that make it the weakest of the bunch. First of all, in the other books McDermid is writing about the North of England, which she clearly knows like the back of her hand. The locale in the other books is really the third character after Tony Hill and Carol Jordan. The European locations never quite come to life in the same way. But the biggest problem with The Last Temptation is that McDermid tries too hard to force a particular ending. In order to get where she wants to go, she has to have Carol Jordan do something completely out of character and, frankly, she doesn't do a good job of convincing us of the reason. The whole book feels a bit contrived. Kudos to McDermid for trying something different instead of just writing variations on a theme, but the theme is one she does really well and this effort is a bit disappointing.

4. The Torment of Others -- 5 stars

There's a reason this made the best adaptation of McDermid's books for the BBC series "Wire in the Blood." By this point, McDermid had started to write really well, and she'd really gotten the hang of tying the two story lines together. In the main story, someone is killing prostitutes with the m.o. used by a man currently in an insane asylum. How does the killer know exactly what the prior murderer did? The mystery is more satisfying than that of the prior novels and the sub-plot, involving kidnapped boys, also intrigues. There's not much to learn at this point about Dr. Hill, but while the third book didn't entirely work, the aftereffects of that novel's events on Carol Jordan are all too real and bring the characters' relationship to a new level.

If books on criminal profiling and psychological forensics are your thing, you'll probably really enjoy McDermid's work. If someone has recommended her writing to you and the Dr. Hill/Carol Jordan mysteries sound like they are too gruesome, check out the Grave Tattoo, which is a neat, little literary mystery.

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An aching, gripping, fetal-position read, May 2, 2005

By 

Laurie Fletcher "Laurie Fletcher" (Casper, Wyoming, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Torment of Others: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is one tough book!! Really dark, really gruesome, really creepy, really good! Carol Jordan is far from recovered from the last book and Tony Hill is really at a loss as to how to help her, but decides that proximity is the first step. That's the good news. The bad news is that Carol is put in charge of a new investigative squad whose members haven't gelled yet and who can't necessarily be trusted to act as a team vs. in each individual's own interest. AND they have a horrible and relentless serial criminal on their hands. This is one breathless read. You do need to stop sometimes just to escape the cruelty and darkness, though. I don't even want to think of how and where McDermid came up with this one. It smacks a lot of her first ("Mermaids Singing") but the similar crimes seem so much worse when they are visited on women. This is just heavy with the shock of insanity and yet it has a glowing, redemptive quality as well. It is hard to see how McDermid's writing could improve and yet she manages it over and over again. Now the long wait begins for her next outing.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Losing a Little Steam, July 19, 2007

By 

Kathleen Chamberlain (Emory, VA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Torment of Others (Mass Market Paperback)

I'm definitely a McDermid fan, but a picky one. In general, I think her stand-alones are stand-outs, but I find Kate Brannigan and her sidekick annoying, and the Lindsay Gordon series is uneven. Up till now, the Hill/Jordan series has been quite strong, but the formula is starting to wear out in "Torment of Others." (Which is not all McDermid's fault, of course; such is the nature of even the best fiction formulae.)

For starters, the plot rises rather high on the implausibility scale; I'm willing to suspend a lot of disbelief when it comes to fiction, but there's a limit, and this book surpasses it. And maybe I just read too much, but the "inside-the-killer's-head" narrative strategy is becoming a little threadbare, too.

Then there are the main characters, who have lost a lot of their former complexity. It's as if McDermid has gotten tired of developing them and instead allows one or two traits to serve as a sort of shorthand for the more-fully-realized characters of yore. Tony, the psychological profiler, has become practically infallible, never making a professional misjudgment. His leaps of intuition are always right on the money. Carol, the maverick detective, is now erratic in ways that are only partly explained by her current psychological situation as a recovering rape victim -- too often her character seems sacrificed to the needs of the story. Carol is supposedly a crack professional, top-notch in her field, yet she overlooks things that can be spotted even by a reader like me, whose knowledge of police work comes solely from reading detective novels. For instance, when Carol & Co. decide to use a cop as a decoy prostitute to suss out the killer, I said to myself, "A decoy? But it's clear that the killer knows the Bradfield red-light district intimately; he'll spot her instantly as a suspicious newcomer." Yet pages and pages elapse before this idea occurs to Carol (or to anyone else except, of course, Tony). And not even an amateur would overlook the possibility that, if one child murder victim is found buried in an out-of-the-way spot, the body of another victim might be in the same area. Yet Tony has to point this out to Carol, who figuratively smacks herself in the head and says, "Why didn't I think of that?" Why? Perhaps because plot has been allowed to trump character.

One element of the Hill/Jordan series that I really like, however, is the presence of gay and lesbian characters whose sexuality is not the point of the story; they are just part of the milieu, the way they would be in life. A few other Amazon reviewers have complained about this presence, seeing it as too heavy-handed, as evincing too much of an "agenda" on McDermid's part. But most novels have no gay characters at all; I wonder if these same Amazon reviewers think such books are promoting a heavy-handed *heterosexual* "agenda." If homosexuality seems too prominent in "Torment of Others," I fear that's a flaw of this particular difficult-to-swallow plot; it doesn't indicate any problem with representing gay characters as such. To my mind, the more visible they are, the better. So rock on, Val.