The Last Temptation

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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. A] complex, brooding novel [which] boasts a highly complex… plot. McDermid is by far the most talented writer of the three [writers reviewed]… The climax of the book is quite horrifying… Scottish crime writer McDermid (Cross and Burn) adeptly reworks Jane Austen's Gothic satire for the modern audiences. A homeschooled minister's daughter bored by the "narrow confines" of the Dorset Continue reading »

A new chief constable, James Blake, arrives at Bradfield CID in McDermid's excellent sixth Tony Hill novel (after Beneath the Bleeding). Since Blake takes a skeptical view of both Tony's Continue reading » An intriguing, 200-year-old mystery propels this multilayered stand-alone from British author McDermid set in England's Lake District. Scholar Jane Gresham pursues her theory that HMS Continue reading » 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.This superb novel should make Gold Dagger-nominee McDermid's reputation and bring her new readers in droves. It's December 1963 and teenage girls all over Britain are swooning to the Beatles' ""I Continue reading » Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read. But the case is about to come uncomfortably close to home. The next victim is a friend of his. And his former partner, DCI Carol Jordan, is herself in Germany, working undercover in a world where human life is cheaper than a drugs deal. She needs his help as much as the serial killer hunters do.The Case of the Missing Conservatories'' is what lively and likeable Kate Brannigan, the English detective from Manchester introduced in Dead Beat , calls this, her second adventure, which founders Continue reading »