Val Mcdermid

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BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR


Title: The Distant Echo: Description:
Four in the morning, mid-December and snow is smothering St Andrews. Student Alex Gilbey and his three best friends are staggering home from a part when they stumble upon the body of a young woman. Rosie Duff has been repaed, stabbed and left for dead. The only suspects are four young students stained with her blood. Twenty five years later, Fife police mount a cold case review.

Title: A Place Of Execution: Description:
Val McDermid is known for the violence, and tension, of her writing. Both The Mermaids Singing, which won the Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel of 1995, and The Wire in the Blood (1997) are monuments to the human capacity for torture (and the psychological profiling supposed to counter it). No less thrilling, A Place of Execution is, however, a different kind of book. On one level, it is about the disappearance of a schoolgirl, Alison Carter, in December 1963: a girl from a tiny Derbyshire village whose disappearance turns into a personal quest for the detective heading the investigation, George Bennett. Resisting comparisons with real events in Manchester (what are now known as the "Moors Murders"), Bennett is confronted with the strange and isolated community of Scardale: a community reputed to be a "a law unto itself", it may well harbour the kind of secret which allows murder to reverberate across the generations. Building slowly with lots of suspense, McDermid takes her readers through Bennett's investigation and the trial that follows, projecting back to the beginning of the 1960s a very contemporary anxiety about the "desecration of childhood". It's an intelligent and compelling move, one that sustains the book's shift to the present and Bennett's return to the case decades later when he tells his story to the journalist Catherine Heathcote. Heathcote is a woman who wants to know; complex, thoughtful, skilfully plotted, A Place of Execution suggests how unsettling that knowledge can be. --Vicky Lebeau

Title: The Distant Echo: Description:
Val McDermid's The Distant Echo is, even more so than with her previous work, a masterpiece of trickery and misdirection. In 1978, four male students find the body of Rosie Duff half-buried in the snow and their lives are variously damaged by the suspicion that falls on them when the murder is never solved; a quarter of a century later, the case is reopened and suddenly the quartet start to be killed one after the other. This is an effective thriller because it is so intelligent about the ways in which time changes things--secrets that seemed important become trivial and investigative techniques become ever more accurate. It is also intelligent about the ways in which things do not change--the friendships of the four men persist even when one becomes a fundamentalist preacher and another a post-modern literary theorist. Unusually for McDermid, this is a very Scots book as well--the investigating officers Maclennan and Lawson are very much men of a particular time and place. McDermid has a real sense of how to make forensic details count in a murder story--she also, more importantly, has a heart--this is a novel that makes us care passionately about victims and suspects alike. --Roz Kaveney

Title: The Torment Of Others: Description:
The Torment of Others is a salutary reminder what an asset to British crime fiction Val McDermid is. Her first books with journalist Lindsay Gordon as heroine gave hints of the talent that was to mature so impressively--and the subsequent series with the resourceful private eye Kate Brannigan demonstrated a sharper eye for the harder edges of society. But the best was just around the corner. McDermid's third sequence with clinical psychologist profiler Tony Hill was something of a quantum leap: as well as forging one of the most memorable figures in contemporary crime fiction with mildly eccentric Hill, McDermid added a degree of psychological acuity that made the earlier books seem like warm-ups for the main event. The latest outing for Hill, The Torment of Others, also features McDermid's other richly realised creation, DCI Carol Jordan, and the author carries her familiar protagonists into truly unsettling new areas. This time, Hill is coping with a return to practical clinical profiling after a frustrating spell as an academic. And there's another major complication for him: his ex-partner Carol Jordan is no longer sure she wishes to be in charge of a team after the brutal sexual assault she suffered during undercover work. But she is persuaded to do so--and realises that one of her main tasks will be to create a cohesive unit. A dead woman discovered in a sexual position on a bloody mattress, appears to be the victim of a killer the team knows all about: the monstrous Derek Tyler, who had carried out similarly bloody work two years before. However, forensics have landed Tyler in a mental institution--does this mean that Hill and Jordan are searching for a murderer who is copying the techniques of the psychotic Tyler? While this may not be the best starting point for those new to McDermid, enthusiasts will find all the key elements are firmly and satisfyingly in place. --Barry Forshaw

Title: The Wire In The Blood: Description:
Young girls are disappearing around the country. Everyone assumes they are teenage runaways, headed for the big city and bright lights. THey vanish without trace - society's disposable children. There is nothing to connect them to each other, let alone the killer whose charming manner hides a warped and sick mind. NJobody moves inside the messy heads of serial killers like Dr Tony Hill. Heading up the newly formed National Profiling Task Force...372

Title: Cleanbreak: Description:
Manchester based private eye Kate Brannigan is not amused when thieves have the audacity to steal a Monet from a stately home where she'd arranged the security. She's even less thrilled when the hunt for the thieves drags her on a treacherous foray across Europe as she goes head to head with organised crime. And as if that isnt enough, a routine industrial case starts leaving bodies across the northwest, giving Kate more problems than she can deal with

Title: The Grave Tattoo: Description:
A 200 year old secret is now a matter of life and death. And it could be worth a fortune. Summer in the Lake District and heavy rain uncovers a bizarrely tattooed body. Could it be linked to an old rumour that Fletcher Christian, mutinous First Mate on the Bounty actaully returned to England?

Title: Blue Genes: Description:
Kate Brannigan's life is complicated enough without a doctor's murder to investigate. Still, when she discovers he's been carrying out fertility treatment for her friend, who is now pregnant, she decides to go under-cover and investigate.

Title: Killing The Shadows: Description:
Stunning new psychological thriller from Britain's most exciting crime writer, the award-winning Val McDermid... 'Val McDermid is a roaring Ferrari amid the crowded traffic on the crime-writing road' Independent A killer is on the loose, blurring the line between fact and fiction. His prey -- the writers of crime novels who have turned psychological profilers into the heroes of the nineties. But this killer shatters all conventional wisdom, and for one woman, the desperate hunt to uncover his identity becomes a matter of life and death. Professor Fiona Cameron is an academic psychologist who uses computer technology to help police forces track serial offenders. She used to help the Met, but when they screwed up an investigation after ignoring her advice she vowed never to work for them again. Still smarting from the experience, she's working a case in Toledo when her lover, thriller writer Kit Martin, tells her a fellow crime novelist has been murdered. It's not her case, but Fiona can't help taking an interest. Which is just as well, because before too long the killer strikes again. And again. And Fiona finds herself caught in a race against time not only to save a life but to bring herself redemption, both personal and professional. About the Author Val McDermid grew up in a Scottish mining community then read English at Oxford. She was a journalist for sixteen years, spending the last three as Northern Bureau Chief of a national Sunday tabloid. She is now a full-time writer and lives in South Manchester

Title: The Grave Tattoo: Description:
Present-day murder has its roots in the eighteenth century and the mutiny on the Bounty in this highly acclaimed new psychological thriller. A 200 year-old-secret is now a matter of life and death. And it could be worth a fortune. It's summer in the Lake District and torrential rain has uncovered a bizarrely tattooed body on a hillside. Could it be linked to centuries-old rumours that surround Fletcher Christian, mutinous First Mate on the ill-fated Bounty, a legendary massacre on the strange island of Pitcairn, and Christian's possible return to England? Jane Gresham wants to know. An expert on Wordsworth, she has a theory that the Lakeland poet, a childhood friend of Christian's, had harboured the fugitive and turned his tale into an epic poem - which has since stayed hidden. But as she follows each lead, death is hard on her heels. The 200-year-old mystery is putting lives at risk. And it isn't just the truth that is waiting to be discovered, but a bounty worth millions of pounds!

Title: Killing The Shadows: Description:
Stunning serial killer chiller from Britain's most exciting author of psychological thrillers the award-winning Val McDermid! "A roaring Ferrari amid the crowded traffic on the crime-writing road" - "Independent". A killer is on the loose and he's blurring the line between fact and fiction. His prey - the writers of crime novels. But this murderer is like no other; his bloodlust shatters all the conventional wisdom on how serial killers operate. And for one woman the desperate hunt to uncover his identity becomes a matter of life and death. Professor Fiona Cameron is an academic psychologist who uses computer technology to track serial offenders. She vowed never to work for the Met again after they went against her advice and badly screwed up an investigation as a result. But when her lover, thriller writer Kit Martin, tells her a fellow crime novelist has been murdered, Fiona can't help taking an interest. With the killer striking again, Fiona is caught up in a race against time, not only to save a life, but to bring herself redemption, both personal and professional.

Title: The Last Temptation: Description:
Terrifying psychological chiller featuring clinical psychologist Tony Hill of The Mermaids Singing and Wire in the Blood. 'There is no one in contemporary crime fiction who has managed to combine the visceral and the humane as well as Val McDermid ...She's the best we've got' New York Times A twisted killer targeting psychologists has left a grisly trail across Europe. Dr Tony Hill, expert at mapping the minds of murderers, is reluctant to get involved. But then the next victim is much closer to home...Meanwhile, his former partner, DCI Carol Jordan, is working undercover in Berlin, on a dangerous operation to trap a millionaire traffiker. When the game turns nasty, Tony is the only person she can call on for help. Confronting a cruelty that has its roots in Nazi atrocities, Tony and Carol are thrown together in a world of violence and corruption, where they have no one to trust but each other. From the Publisher Val's done it again. An unmissable book from the Queen of psychological suspense, following her recent top-ten hardback Killing the Shadows --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. About the Author Val McDermid grew up in a Scottish mining community then read English at Oxford. She was a journalist for sixteen years, spending the last three as Northern Bureau Chief of a national Sunday tabloid. She is now a full-time writer and lives in South Manchester.

Title: Killing The Shadows: Description:
A villain is on the loose and he's blurring the line between fact and fiction. His prey - the writers of crime novels. But this murderer is like no other: his bloodlust shatters all the conventional wisdom on how serial killers operate. And for one woman the desperate hunt to uncover his identity becomes a matter of life and death.

Title: The Torment Of Others: Description:
Crime novel

Title: The Distant Echo: Description:
Powerful and atmospheric psychological thriller from the multi-award-winning Val McDermid. "McDermid's capacity to enter the warped mind of a deviant criminal is shiveringly convincing" - "The Times". Some things just won't let you go. The past, for instance. That night in the cemetery. The girl's body in the snow, her blood scarlet against the white ground! Four a.m. on a freezing Fife morning and four drunken students stumble upon the body of a woman lying in the snow. Rosie has been raped, stabbed and left for dead in an ancient Pictish cemetery. And the only suspects are the four young men now stained with her blood. Twenty-five years later the police mount a 'cold case' review of Rosie's unsolved murder and the four are still suspects. But when one of them dies in a suspicious house fire and another in a burglary gone bad, it seems that someone is pursuing their own brand of justice. For the remaining two there is only one way to avoid becoming the next victim - find out who really killed Rosie all those years ago! From the Publisher SOME THINGS JUST WON’T LET YOU GO The past, for instance. That night in the cemetery. The girl’s body in the snow, her blood scarlet against the white ground… Four a.m. on a freezing Fife morning and four drunken students stumble upon the body of a woman lying in the snow. Rosie has been raped, stabbed and left for dead in an ancient Pictish cemetery. And the only suspects are the four young men now stained with her blood. Twenty-five years later the police mount a ‘cold case’ review of Rosie’s unsolved murder and the four are still suspects. But when one of them dies in a suspicious house fire and another in a burglary gone bad, it seems that someone is pursuing their own brand of justice. For the remaining two there is only one way to avoid becoming the next victim – find out who really killed Rosie all those years ago… --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. About the Author Val McDermid grew up in a Scottish mining community then read English at Oxford. She was a journalist for sixteen years, spending the last three as Northern Bureau Chief of a national Sunday tabloid. She is now a full-time writer and lives in South Manchester. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Title: A Place Of Execution: Description:
Val McDermid is known for the violence, and tension, of her writing. Both The Mermaids Singing, which won the Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel of 1995, and The Wire in the Blood (1997) are monuments to the human capacity for torture (and the psychological profiling supposed to counter it). No less thrilling, A Place of Execution is, however, a different kind of book. On one level, it is about the disappearance of a schoolgirl, Alison Carter, in December 1963: a girl from a tiny Derbyshire village whose disappearance turns into a personal quest for the detective heading the investigation, George Bennett. Resisting comparisons with real events in Manchester (what are now known as the "Moors Murders"), Bennett is confronted with the strange and isolated community of Scardale: a community reputed to be a "a law unto itself", it may well harbour the kind of secret which allows murder to reverberate across the generations. Building slowly with lots of suspense, McDermid takes her readers through Bennett's investigation and the trial that follows, projecting back to the beginning of the 1960s a very contemporary anxiety about the "desecration of childhood". It's an intelligent and compelling move, one that sustains the book's shift to the present and Bennett's return to the case decades later when he tells his story to the journalist Catherine Heathcote. Heathcote is a woman who wants to know; complex, thoughtful, skilfully plotted, A Place of Execution suggests how unsettling that knowledge can be. --Vicky Lebeau

Title: Crack Down (kate Brannigan): Description:
'Crime writing of the very highest order ...Kate Brannigan has turned into the most interesting sleuthess around' The Times There was only one reason Manchester-based private eye Kate Brannigan was prepared to let her boyfriend help out with the investigation into a car sales fraud -- nothing bad could happen. But by now Kate should know that with Richard you have to expect the unexpected. With the unexpected being Richard behind bars, Kate seems to be the obvious choice to look after his eight-year-old son -- who proves even more troublesome than his father. Kate finds herself dragged into a world of drug traffickers, child pornographers, fraudsters and violent gangland enforcers...bringing her face to face with death in the most terrifying investigation of her career.

Title: The Mermaids Singing: Description:
Award-winning psychological crime thriller from Val McDermid, 'Manchester's answer to Thomas Harris' (Guardian) You always remember the first time. Isn't that what they say about sex? How much more true it is of murder...Up till now, the only serial killers Tony Hill had encountered were safely behind bars. This one's different -- this one's on the loose. In the northern town of Bradfield four men have been found mutilated and tortured. Fear grips the city; no man feels safe. Clinical psychologist Tony Hill is brought in to profile the killer. A man with more than enough sexual problems of his own, Tony himself becomes the unsuspecting target in a battle of wits and wills where he has to use every ounce of his professional nerve to survive. A tense, brilliantly written psychological thriller, The Mermaids Singing explores the tormented mind of a serial killer unlike any the world of fiction has ever seen. About the Author Val McDermid grew up in a Scottish mining community then read English at Oxford. She was a journalist for sixteen years, spending the last three as Northern Bureau Chief of a national Sunday tabloid. She is now a full-time writer and lives in South Manchester

Title: The Wire In The Blood: Description:
Taut, suspenseful and ferociously readable thriller featuring psychological profiler Dr Tony Hill. 'A terrific chiller from Manchester's answer to Thomas Harris' Guardian 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, Shaz Bowman, comes up with a concrete theory, but it is ridiculed by the rest of the group until someone murders and mutilates one of their number. Could Bowman's 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. About the Author Val McDermid grew up in a Scottish mining community then read English at Oxford. She was a journalist for sixteen years, spending the last three as Northern Bureau Chief of a national Sunday tabloid. She is now a full-time writer and lives in South Manchester

Title: Star Struck: Description:
'Star Struck is Val McDermid at the top of the ratings' Ian Rankin Bodyguarding had never made it to Manchester PI Kate Brannigan's wish list. But somebody's got to pay the bills at Brannigan & Co, and if the only earner on offer is playing nursemaid to a paranoid soap star, the fast-talking computer-loving white-collar crime expert has to swallow her pride and slip into something more glam than her Thai boxing kit. Soon, however, offstage dramas overshadow the fictional storylines, culminating in the unscripted murder of the self-styled 'Seer to the Stars', and Kate finds herself with more questions than answers. What's more, her tame hacker has found virtual love, her process server keeps getting arrested, and the ever-reliable Dennis has had the temerity to get himself charged with murder. Nobody told her there'd be days like these...

Title: Blue Genes (kate Brannigan): Description:
'This is crime writing of the very highest order ...Kate Brannigan has turned into the most interesting sleuthess around' The Times Kate Brannigan's not just having a bad day, she's having a bad week. Her boyfriend's death notice is in the paper, her plan to catch a team of fraudsters is in disarray and a neo-punk band want her to find out who's trashing their flyposters. And her business partner wants her to buy him out. Fine, but private eyes with principles never have that kind of cash. Kate can't even cry on her best friend's shoulder, for Alexis has worries of her own. Her girlfriend's pregnant, and when the doctor responsible for the fertility treatment is murdered, Alexis needs Kate like she's never done before. So what's a girl to do? Delving into the alien world of medical experimentation and the underbelly of the rock-music business, Kate confronts betrayal and cold-blooded greed as she fights to save not only her livelihood, but her life as well...

Title: Clean Break (kate Brannigan): Description:
Manchester-based, kick-boxing PI Kate Brannigan takes on the hard men of European organised crime as she battles to recover a Monet in a case that stretches love and loyalty to the limits. Manchester-based private eye Kate Brannigan is not amused when thieves have the audacity to steal a Monet from a stately home where she's arranged security. She's even less thrilled when the hunt for the thieves drags her on a treacherous foray across Europe as she goes head to head with organized crime. And as if that isn't enough, a routine industrial case starts leaving a trail of bodies across the Northwest, giving Kate more problems than she can deal with. Cleaning up the mess in Clean Break forces Kate to confront harsh truths in her own life as she battles with a testing array of villains in a case that stretches love and loyalty to the limits.

Title: Dead Beat (kate Brannigan): Description:
Dead Beat introduces Kate Brannigan, a female pricate detective set to do for Manchester what V.I. Warshawski has done for Chicargo. As a favour, Kate agrees to track down a missing song-writer Moira Pollock, a search that takes her into some of the seediest parts of Leeds and Bradford. But little does she realise that finding Moira is a prelude to murder...

Title: Kick Back (kate Brannigan): Description:
Kate Brannigan, feisty Manchester-based PI, is back, investigating the bizarre case of the missing conservatories. Before long she's up to her neck in crooked land deals, mortgage scams, financial chicanery - and murder. But when a favour for a friend puts Kate's own life in danger, bizarre is not the first word she thinks of...

Title: Dead Beat: Description:
'This is crime writing of the very highest order ...Kate Brannigan has turned into the most interesting sleuthess around' The Times Dead Beat introduces Kate Brannigan, a female private detective who does for Manchester what V.I. Warshawski has done for Chicago. As a favour, Kate agrees to track down a missing songwriter, Moira Pollock, a search that takes her into some of the seediest parts of Leeds and Bradford. But little does she realize that finding Moira is a prelude to murder...

Title: Beneath The Bleeding: Description:
The terrifying new psychological thriller featuring Tony Hill, criminal profiler and hero of TV's Wire in the Blood. The race is on to uncover the identity of a murderer with nothing to lose -- and everything to kill for. When Robbie Bishop, star midfielder for the Bradfield Vics, is poisoned by a rare and deadly toxin, profiler Dr Tony Hill and trusted colleague DCI Carol Jordan have their work cut out for them. Robbie was adored, so the public want answers -- but the answers aren't coming, and trails are running cold. Then a bomb explodes in the football stadium, causing massive casualties -- and another man dies from poisoning. Is there a link between the cases? And what are the motives for these crimes? The clock is ticking for Tony and Carol -- and the death toll keeps rising! About the Author Val McDermid grew up in a Scottish mining community then read English at Oxford. She was a journalist for sixteen years, spending the last three as Northern Bureau Chief of a national Sunday tabloid. She divides her time between Northumberland and Cheshire. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Title: The Distant Echo: Description:
On a freezing Fife morning four drunken students stumble upon the body of a woman in the snow. Rosie has been raped, stabbed and left for dead in an ancient Pictish cemetary. And the only suspects are the four young men now stained in her blood. Twenty five yers later the police mount a "cold case" review of Rosie's unsolved murder and the four are still suspects. But when two of them die in suspicious circumstances, it seemd that someone is pursuing their own brand of justice. For the remaining two there is only one way to avoid becoming the next victim - find out who really killed Rosie all those years ago...