The Wire in the Blood (Tony Hill and Carol Jordan, #2) (Dr. Tony Hill and Carol Jordan Mysteries, #2) (Dr. Tony Hill and Carol Jordan, #2)

by Val McDermid

Val McDermid’s Number One bestselling crime series, featuring psychological profiler Dr Tony Hill and Jacko Vance – protagonist of new novel THE RETRIBUTION – in the suspenseful and ferociously readable thriller that led to the much-loved TV show.

Young girls are disappearing around the country, and there is nothing to connect them to one another, let alone the killer whose charming manner hides a warped and sick mind.

Dr Tony Hill, head of the new National Profiling Task Force, sets his team an exercise: they are given the details of missing teenagers and asked to discover any possible links between the cases. Only one officer comes up with a theory – a theory that is ridiculed by the group … until one of their number is murdered and mutilated.

For Tony Hill, the murder becomes a matter for personal revenge and, joined by colleague Carol Jordan, he embarks on a campaign of psychological terrorism – a game where hunter and hunted can all too easily be reversed.

• ISBN13: 9780007217120
• Publish Date: 6 February 2006 (first published 3 November 1997)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 19 May 2010
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
• Imprint: HarperCollins
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 544
• Language: English
• URL: http://harpercollins.co.uk

Reviews

[brokentune]

Meh. I'm really not getting any warm fuzzies for this series. Nor any reaction really.

I was hoping that the second book in the series would be more interesting and getting away from the scene setting that took up so much of The Mermaids Singing, but no...a large part of the book is still about workplace politics and Tony Hill's struggle to find acceptance of his profiling task force within the police.

Blah, blah, policing, blah, blah...

And I have literally no interest in the relationship between Tony and Carol. Shaz was an interesting character but there was not that much interaction between her and the rest of the characters.

The fact that we know from the start who the killer is, does not help the situation. Instead of reading on to guess who may have done it is practically spoilt and for me there isn't that much fun in following the profilers trying to balance their professional aspirations with their personal entanglements.

So, whilst I seem to enjoy Val's standalone novels, I just can't find anything in this series that resonates with me. At all.

DNF @ 55%.

[wyvernfriend]

From quite close to the beginning you know who dunnit, it's the trying to pin the crime on the perpetrator that's the story in this one. He's so completely immoral and cunning and I really did root for the good guys to succeed but could also see where they encountered pitfalls that really got in the way.

Enjoyable, but pretty gruesome, I want to see the series now!