This sadistic, twisted yet intriguingly ingenious thriller garnered Val McDermid Britain's top crime-fiction award, the Gold Dagger, which only proves it's not as genteel a nation as we've been led to believe. The Mermaids Singing follows a killer who thrives on finding ever more inventive ways to seduce and torture sexually confused young men and records their death struggles digitally to market them as interactive home movies.
From Publishers Weekly
McDermid (A Clean Break) enters new ground with a dark tale that is more complex, more carefully crafted and far more disturbing than her Kate Brannigan mysteries. By the time the police admit that Bradfield, a fictional city in northern England, has a serial killer, four men are already dead, each tortured in a different way and then abandoned outdoors in town. Baffled by a lack of physical evidence left by the meticulous sociopath, police bring in Tony Hill, a Home Office forensic psychologist who profiles criminals. Tony, who begins each day by "selecting a persona," devours crime data with a fascination approaching admiration for the killer. The interest distracts him from obsessing over his own sexual impotence and over the "exquisite torture" of salacious phone calls he's been getting from a strange woman. DI Carol Jordan, a mercifully normal person who is Tony's liaison with the force, quickly grasps the profiling approach while keeping her policing instincts. Carol and Tony forge an uneasy relationship; but, as they pursue "the Queer Killer," a cloddish policeman undermines them, a local reporter blows the case to get a byline and the murderer closes in on a new quarry. A warning: woven into this powerful story are journal entries in which the murder discusses torture in loving detail, an aspect that makes this graphic, psychologically terrifying tale almost as off-putting as it is impossible to put down. (Dec.) FYI: This novel won Britain's Gold Dagger Award for best crime novel of 1995.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
First published in Great Britain in 1995, this title marks a clean break from McDermid's Kate Brannigan/Lindsay Gordon series. Here, criminologist Dr. Tony Hill and Detective Inspector Carol Jordan search for an arrogant serial killer who tortures his victims and leaves no clues. A safe bet.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New York Times Book Review, Marilyn Stasio
... a deliciously gruesome serial-killer thriller ...
From Booklist
McDermid's exciting, rapid-fire whodunit is set in the fictional Midlands city of Bradfield, where a serial killer is at large whose signature is the sexual torture of male victims. Stymied, the constables bring in Tony Hill, constructor of psychological profiles, a move resented by a crusty investigator who, jealous of Hill as an overeducated outsider, barges ahead with his own gumshoe method, posting undercover police in Bradfield's gay bars. This indeed produces a suspect, but Hill, in alliance and in dalliance with investigator Carol Jordan, is unpersuaded: his profile of a computer-literate stalker doesn't match the suspect. Meanwhile, at the interstices of the conflict between Hill/Jordan and the curmudgeonly policeman, the author inserts the killer's sadistic chronicle of the crimes, which forces readers to reevaluate possible candidates. This involving method cranks up a high-velocity, high-tension ending involving the stalker's next intended victim--Tony Hill--whose proclivity for phone sex has landed him in deep trouble. A satisfying descent into the territory of a twisted mind. Gilbert Taylor
From Kirkus Reviews
Nothing in McDermid's wisecracking books about Manchester p.i. Kate Brannigan (Clean Break, 1995, etc.) could have prepared you for this taut study of Handy Andy, the name that psychological profiler Tony Hill has adopted to humanize the faceless S/M connoisseur the Bradfield coppers call the Queer Killer. Tony, who's treating his own sexual hangups by not hanging up on an importunate caller looking for phone sex, is hauled aboard the stalled investigation when bigoted Supt. Tom Cross won't admit the possibility that the three torture-murders are the work of a single hand. In short order Hill and Inspector Carol Jordan have a fourth crime to work with--the mutilated body of a local constable--but it doesn't help; Andy is too savvy, and now too practiced, to leave any traces at the scene. As Andy recounts the details of each murder to a celebratory tape recorder, Cross stumbles badly, planting evidence on a gym manager who bragged about knowing all four victims, beating and arresting him when he tries to flee the country, and abandoning him in his holding cell to a nightmare of justice gone wrong . Even with Cross on suspension, the case still has room for the mole who's leaking info to his lover on the Sentinel Times and for the copycat killer determined to piggyback on the notoriety of Handy Andy, who's planning a last coup against Hill himself. The grim details make this one not for everybody--but if serial killers are your meat, you'll see why McDermid won this year's Gold Dagger from Britain's Crime Writers Association. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"Compelling and shocking"--Minette Walters
"Complex...powerful...psychologically terrifying...impossible to out down."--Publishers Weekly
"Exciting, rapid-fire...a satisfying descent into the territory of a twisted mind."--Booklist
Review
"Compelling and shocking"--Minette Walters
"Complex...powerful...psychologically terrifying...impossible to out down."--Publishers Weekly
"Exciting, rapid-fire...a satisfying descent into the territory of a twisted mind."--Booklist
Book Description
This was the summer he discovered what he wanted--at a gruesome museum of criminology far off the beaten track of more timid tourists. Visions of torture inspired his fantasies like a muse. It would prove so terribly fulfilling.
The bodies of four men have been discovered in the town of Bradfield. Enlisted to investigate is criminal psychologist Tony Hill. Even for a seasoned professional, the series of mutilation sex murders is unlike anything he's encountered before. But profiling the psychopath is not beyond him. Hill's own past has made him the perfect man to comprehend the killer's motives. It's also made him the perfect victim.
A game has begun for the hunter and the hunted. But as Hill confronts his own hidden demons, he must also come face-to-face with an evil so profound he may not have the courage--or the power--to stop it...
From the Publisher
'Compelling and shocking' Minette Walters 'Manchester's answer to Thomas Harris' - Lucretia Stewart, Guardian 'A superb psychological thriller' - Cosmopolitan 'Truely, horribly good' - Mail on Sunday
The Mermaids Singing FROM THE PUBLISHER
Another body has been found. The fourth. Now even the most reluctant members of the Bradfield police department have to admit they have a serial killer on their hands. A sicko. All the victims have been young men, their naked bodies broken and battered. All have been tortured. Detective Inspector Carol Jordan has been working around the clock, teamed with criminologist Dr. Tony Hill. While Jordan is hunting for clues, Hill is composing a psychological profile of the murderer. The puzzle he is piecing together is very detailed - and very disturbing. According to Hill, "Handy Andy," as they've dubbed the killer, considers the murders sheer perfection - each one meticulously planned and flawlessly executed. "Andy" is too good to leave clues and too smart to get caught. This killer is searching for something far more insidious than revenge or justice - it's a way to showcase skills. And the skills on display are murder and torture. But Tony Hill's profile of the killer is grounded in several basic assumptions - and if even one is off, the consequences could be fatal.
Art & Photography
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