Customer Reviews

The Wire in the Blood

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Val McDermid is one of the most adventurous current crime writers, a welcome change from those whose every new book is a gradually less profitable clone of their previous one. This story, a sequel to the excellent 'The Mermaids Singing', is actually not much like it at all. The main characters return, but that's where the similarity ends. The Mermaids Singing focused in on several ghastly serial murders and the efforts of criminal profiler Tony Hill to get a grasp of the killer's mind, while battling the personal demons that seem to afflict every fictional police psychologist.

In 'The Wire in the Blood', girls are disappearing and dying and we guess quite early on who's responsible - the book details the efforts of the police to link the killings and determine the killer's identity. There are many stories in this book, and in the hands of a less skilled writer it could easily have fallen apart. Even with this writer's talent, there's a lot going on to keep track of, we're introduced in detail to a huge crowd of individuals in the first few chapters and there are lots of threads to follow.

The centerpiece of the plot is the return of Tony Hill, this time teaching a class of baby profilers, who all bond together and function as a forensic profiling collegiate ensemble when one of their own number disappears after getting too close to the truth. As well as heaps of information about profiling itself, the book offers insight into how territorial turf wars and the resentment by old-time beat police of the 'mumbo jumbo' of psychological tools can impact effective crime fighting - unlike his fictional FBI counterparts, Tony Hill does not ride in on a white horse as much as bang on the door and beg to be heard. Like many of Ms McDermid's books it's populated with strong females, with a nod of approval to gay women.

This isn't a perfect book - there are patches of coarse writing, some things are a bit hackneyed (hidden basement full of custom torture equipment...), the symbolism of the victim's injuries is over the top, and Dr Hill is only able to feel fully understood once his beloved, a Police Officer, also has 'blood on her hands'... hmmm. But it's interesting, touching on things most crime books don't, and is far better than many much better known best-sellers.

Val McDermid is a well-practiced author of British police procedural mysteries. This book is one of a series centered on the profiler Tony Hill, whose methods are mistrusted by more conventional police officers. In this case, the serial killer is a high-profile public personality described as the third most trusted person in England. McDermid's descriptions of the hunt for this murderer, including the tangents and false leads, are well done. On the down side, the reader may have trouble keeping track of the many characters with common English names. McDermid's graphic portrayals of the killer's brutality may churn some stomachs.

Val McDermid's "The Wire in the Blood" is not a whodunit. It features a psychopath whose identity is never in doubt. He is so devoid of compassion that one wonders if he is human at all. Jacko Vance is, to his adoring public, a saint on earth. After losing his lower right arm while attempting to save several victims at the scene of a terrible car accident, Jacko becomes a famous television personality and a tireless charity worker. What no one knows is that this seemingly kind and selfless man is hiding a monstrous secret.

Jacko's adversaries are Dr. Tony Hill, a skilled psychological profiler, and DCI Carol Jordan, Hill's former lover and someone whose judgment and skills he still values. What begins as an exercise in profiling turns deadly serious when one of Hill's young students is found brutally murdered and mutilated. Hill and Jordan pull out all the stops to find the serial killer whom they believe is responsible for the disappearance of a number of teenaged girls as well as the murder of the young police officer whom Dr. Hill was training.

Val McDermid's writing is not for the squeamish. She depicts Jacko's sadism in great detail and she doesn't shrink from killing off likeable characters. I think that McDermid went a little overboard in making Jacko Vance almost too expert in his manipulation of the public and the police. The author unfairly paints the police as naive bumblers, needing Hill and Jordan to do their sleuthing for them. I doubt that real police officers would be as vulnerable to Vance's charm.

At approximately five hundred pages, the book is a bit too long. It could have been more concise with no loss of plot or character development. A secondary plot about a serial arsonist adds little to the novel. However, McDermid keeps the suspense at a high level throughout the book and her writing is always skillful and hard-hitting. All in all, "The Wire in the Blood" is a reasonably good, but not extraordinary, psychological thriller.

" The Wire in the Blood," (1997) is second in what has come to take its name and be known as "The Wire in the Blood" series, of British mysteries/thrillers/police procedurals, by increasingly well-known Scottish-born author Val McDermid, now considered a leading practitioner, in company with Ian Rankin and Denise Mina, of the Scottish crime writing school that we call "tartan noir," for its high level of violence, sheer bloody-mindedness, and grisly, witty humor. McDermid grew up in a Scottish mining community - Kirkcaldy, as it happens, in the heart of the Fife coalfields. (Ian Rankin, currently the dean of Scottish mystery authors, is also from Fife.) She read English at Oxford, on a rare scholarship; worked as a journalist for 16 years, largely in Manchester, where she now lives. In 1995 she won the Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year. Her novel A Place of Execution won a "Los Angeles Times" Book Prize, was named a " New York Times" Notable Book of the Year, won the Anthony, Macavity, and Dilys awards for best novel, and was a finalist for the Edgar Award. A television series that stars the toothsome Robson Green, Wire in the Blood - Complete First Season, based, obviously, upon her "Wire in the Blood" series, has been available in the United Kingdom and the United States for some time.

For many a year, I thought "Wire" must be the first in the series named after it, though I've recently found I was wrong: The Mermaids Singing (Dr. Tony Hill and Carol Jordan Mysteries) was. I thought this because I was closely reading, as has always been my habit,Blood Work by Michael Connelly, and he'd found a way of shoehorning in, as he always did in his earlier works, mention of his next planned works. He mentioned that he was excited about a new, little-known author named Val McDermid, and that the two of them were to collaborate on her next book, "Wire in the Blood." In the end, I don't know what happened to the proposed collaboration, but "Wire" duly appeared, authored by the little-known McDermid. And people are always asking about that title. It comes from a poem,"Four Quartets," by T.S. Eliot: "The trilling wire in the blood/ Sings below inveterate scars/ Appeasing long forgotten wars."

At any rate, "Wire" marks the second appearance of Dr. Tony Hill, psychologist/criminal profiler, and Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) Carol Jordan, with whom he previously worked on the "Mermaids Singing" case. Tony is now heading up a recently formed National Profiling Task Force, trying to teach his work to a half-dozen young cops. Carol has been promoted out of Bradfield (for which read Manchester, McDermid's adopted home town, after her sixteen years there as a journalist), out to dullest, deadest Seaford, in East Yorkshire. The brightest light in Tony's class, Sharon Bowman, who prefers to be called "Shaz," finds a previously unnoticed cluster of disappearances among young girls, that seems to point to a previously unnoticed serial killer. And she thinks she's identified him, one Jacko Vance, formerly British sports hero; after a disabling injury, become a famous U.K. television personality, renowned, as well, for the charity work he does that takes him all over the country. Furthermore, Jacko is married to another outstanding U.K. TV personality, Micky Morgan, newswoman. Most people will consider the famous couple above suspicion; but Shaz will confront Jacko anyway.

Now, I have always had a pet peeve about mysteries centered on Charles Windsor, Prince of Wales (as an early Tom Clancy was); Elizabeth I of England (see Karen Harper's work) ; star TV people, sports figures, or performers of any kind. I believe their presence wrenches the best planned mystery out of shape; and so it does here, to a degree. But McDermid is writing at a white heat in "Wire," at the top of her considerable powers, and the mystery survives. It's one of her very best, in fact. Mind you, it's bloody, violent, and gruesome in the extreme, and not for everyone. I don't know why Connelly bailed, but he missed out on a good thing.

As I've noted in other reviews, I think Val McDermid is a talented writer, her books surpassing much that is currently being produced in the crime/horror/procedural genre. The Wire in the Blood is also well written, with a compelling plot, credible characterization, and a smarmy, creepy narcissist for a villain. I enjoyed the book and read it quickly to reach the dramatic conclusion. There are descriptions of sadistic violence, but for the fairly squeamish reader that I am, they were bearable. The one problem I see, and this is just my opinion, is that the protagonist, Tony Hill, is just a bit too cool and too clever, in some ways just as plasticky smooth as the killer. Not a hero who's easy to warm up to, despite his post-traumatic sexual problems. Fortunately, Carol Jordan's persona is competent but still fallible, easier for the reader to relate with.

Wire in the Blood is a good, gripping psychological thriller and while Tony Hill could be more likeable, this doesn't detract from the value of the story.

In THE MERMAIDS SINGING, Val McDermid introduced her readers to Dr. Tony Hill and Detective Sergeant Carol Jordan. They had teamed up to track down a serial killer who brutally tortured his victims before killing them. They respected each other and worked well together. However, the case took a lot out them and they started to drift apart.

Several months have passed since this horrifying case. Carol Jordan has been promoted and now she is Detective Chief Inspector and in charge of her own group of detectives in the town of Seaford. They are currently working on a case involving a series of arson fires happening around town. Jordan's squad is reluctantly investigating the case until one person dies. Jordan shows them no mercy and works them hard in finding out who is responsible of creating those fires. She will take this case very personally before, during, and after the suspect is arrested.

When we first met Dr. Hill in THE MERMAIDS SINGING he was heading a task force studying the viability of using profilers in police investigations. It was decided that the project is a go and Tony is training a special group of police officers in investigative profiling techniques. The author introduces each one of the students and explains the reason why they decided to become profilers. One day Dr. Hill gives them an exercise involving the unsolved disappearances of several teenage girls all around the United Kingdom. Tony invites Carol to the class to see if she would lend her technical expertise to the class discussion. Most of the students take this project as regular assignment but one of them sees it as much more. She analyzes every single aspect of their disappearances and tries to find a unifying factor. What she discovers is so outrageous that she discusses it in the class. She is ridiculed but undeterred. It is not until someone in her class is brutally murdered that Tony decides to do his own investigation.

The reader learns the identity of the kidnapper and killer earlier on in the book before any of the other characters. We learn why he is how he is and why he does what he does. McDermid evens spends the time in giving developing the characters and learning what they are thinking to some of the victims before they are brutally murdered. It might be considered to be a bit sadist but just because they are characters in the book it does not mean that they cannot be disposable. Some readers might be upset with this but it helps to strengthen the plot.

Tony Hill, Carol Jordan and the students all have a personal stake in bringing the murderer to justice. He thinks that he is invincible. Eventually at the end of the book there is a showdown and the bad guy is stopped. The villain is one of the most evil characters in books right now probably second to Hannibal Lecter. The author opens the possibility of bringing this character back. It will be a pleasure to learn about the repercussions of this book in her next Tony Hill/Carol Jordan booked called THE LAST TEMPTATION. Even if the villain does not return it will be nice to find out what happened afterward even if it is only a few sentences.

A lot of reviewers have criticised this book for being unrealistic.

they fail to see the point.

The whole point of the ENTIRE book is that the plot is unbelieveable, hence people dont!

There is a celebrity going around murdering school-girls. No one believes Shaz Bowman's (a wonderful character) theory, because Jack Vance can't possibly be a serial killer because he's a "celebrity". And people say that the plot is unbelievable because celebrity's don't viciously murder. The whole poin tof the book is that no one believes Shaz because it's so far-fetched.

I feel that people haven't got the message.

this book is very different to The Mermaids Singing. but equally good in a different way.

you should certainly read it.

Because I watched and enjoyed the Tony Hill/Carol Jordan series on television, as well as my 45-year history as an avid mystery/thriller reader, I expected a satisfying if not too challenging read when I chose "Wire in the Blood," by Val McDermid. Shame on me! The woman knows how to craft and present an excellent story that I think will have even the most jaded fan of the genre quickly turning the pages and sacrificing sleep.

Please see the other provided materials to get the plot details. From page one, McDermid tells us who her protagonists will be and what will happen; what we don't know is if the cops will catch the crook, given several major missteps and an extraordinarily skilled serial murderer. As the tale unwinds, the major additions are almost tutorials on the necessary drudgery of profiling and police procedure, as well as psychological profiles of the protaganists. This may suggest that the book is dry and dull, but it is far from that. McDermid has a vivid, action-word vocabulary and for the most part writes well and concisely, with one exception: the almost hysterical, self-punishing angst of Profiler-in-Chief Tony Hill got to be a bit much for me, thus my 4-star rating.

I have already ordered my next McDermid book. Can there be any better testimony to a writer's skill?

Val Mcdermid has a serious talent for writing. She layers multiple mysteries within this novel and impeccably times their solutions into the unraveling of the grand plot... and does it better than just about anyone else today.

Tony Hill and Carol Jordan are two very complicated protagonists whose interaction and partnership and overwhelming sensitivity to each other bring a kind of reality to McDermid's stories that has you rooting for them at every turn. Their work together defines synergy better than a dictionary.

McDermid can look into the depths of human criminal depravity with a candor that brings an aching hollowness to your chest. Such a view into criminal thinking is shocking and unnervingly real, eliciting clammy sweat on your brow while you reach for the light at your bedside.

Read this series (there are four novels at this time...) and watch the BBC television shows (all of which carry the title of this novel, Wire in the Blood,) you will be amply rewarded.

I watched the BBC series and thought I would try the author -she is brilliant!I recently ordered 4 more of her books-I am a new fan.Highly recommend !