Book 1


Book 1

The Mermaids Singing

by Val McDermid

Published 6 November 1995

The Gold Dagger award-winning serial killer thriller that began the Number One bestselling crime series featuring clinical psychologist Dr Tony Hill, hero of TV's much-loved Wire in the Blood.

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.

Four men have been found mutilated and tortured. As fear grips the city, the police turn to clinical psychologist Tony Hill for a profile of the killer. But soon Tony 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, beautifully written psychological thriller, The Mermaids Singing explores the tormented mind of a serial killer unlike any the world of fiction has ever seen.


Book 2


Book 2

The Wire in the Blood

by Val McDermid

Published 3 November 1997

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.


Book 3


Book 3

The Last Temptation

by Val McDermid

Published 4 February 2002

The Number One bestselling crime series featuring Dr Tony Hill, hero of TV’s Wire in the Blood, written by the award-winning Val McDermid. The hunt for a serial killer leads from Britain through Europe in this terrifying psychological thriller.

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 trafficker. 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.


Book 4


Book 4

The Torment of Others

by Val McDermid

Published 24 May 2004

The Number One bestselling crime series featuring Tony Hill, hero of TV’s Wire in the Blood, written by the award-winning Val McDermid. This is a psychological thriller – and serial killer – that will keep you up at night.

For some, there is nothing so sweet, so thrilling, as the torment of others …

A dead girl lies on a blood-soaked mattress, her limbs spread in a parody of ecstasy. The scene matches a series of murders which ended when irrefutable forensic evidence secured the conviction of one Derek Tyler. But Tyler's been locked up in a mental institution for two years, barely speaking a word – except to say that 'the Voice' told him to do it.

Top criminal psychologist Dr Tony Hill is prepared to think the unthinkable – this is not a copycat murder but something much stranger. While DCI Carol Jordan and her team mount a desperate and dangerous undercover police operation to trap the murderer, Hill heads towards a terrifying face-off with one of the most perverse killers he has ever encountered…


Book 5


Book 5

Beneath the Bleeding

by Val McDermid

Published 1 August 2007

The Number One bestselling crime series featuring Dr Tony Hill, hero of TV’s Wire in the Blood. The award-winning Val McDermid is at the height of her powers in this tense masterclass in psychological suspense.

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…


Book 6


Book 6

Fever of the Bone

by Val McDermid

Published 3 September 2009
You should have been a detective. If there's one thing the last year has proved, it's how good you are at finding things out. Not simple things. Hard things. Things that nobody is supposed to be able to find out. Things that are buried so deep nobody even thinks twice about them. The sort of things that turn people's lives inside out once they're exposed.' Meet Tony Hill's most twisted adversary - a killer with a shopping list of victims, a killer unmoved by youth and innocence, a killer driven by the most perverted of desires. The murder and mutilation of teenager Jennifer Maidment is horrific enough on its own. But it's not long before Tony realises it's just the start of a brutal and ruthless campaign that's targeting an apparently unconnected group of young people. Struggling with the newly-awakened ghosts of his own past and desperate for distraction in his work, Tony battles to find the answers that will give him personal and professional satisfaction in his most testing investigation yet.

Book 7


Book 8


Book 9


Book 10


Book 11

How the Dead Speak

by Val McDermid

Published 22 August 2019

Longlisted for the 2020 Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year

The latest in internationally bestselling crime writer Val McDermid's beloved series, How The Dead Speak reunites Tony Hill and Carol Jordan after a mysterious skeleton turns up on the grounds of an old orphanage

Val McDermid is an award-winning, crime-writing powerhouse, and now she returns to her explosive, thrilling series featuring psychological profiler Tony Hill and ex-DCI Carol Jordan in her latest How The Dead Speak

With Tony behind bars and Carol finally out of road as a cop, he's finding unexpected outlets for his talents in jail and she's joined forces with a small informal group of lawyers and forensics experts looking into suspected miscarriages of justice. But they're doing it without each other; being in the same room at visiting hour is too painful to contemplate. Meanwhile, construction is suddenly halted on the redevelopment of an orphanage after dozens of skeletons are found buried in the grounds. Forensic examination reveals they date from between twenty and forty years ago when the nuns were running their repressive regime. But then a different set of skeletons are discovered in a far corner, young men from as recent as ten years ago.

When newly-promoted DI Paula McIntyre discovers that one of the male skeletons is that of a killer who is supposedly alive and behind bars--and the subject of one of Carol's miscarriage investigations--it brings Tony and Carol irresistibly into each other's orbit once again. A shocking, masterfully plotted novel that will leave readers breathless, How The Dead Speak is McDermid at her best and a can't miss read for long-time fans and new readers alike.


Splinter the Silence

by Val McDermid

Published 27 August 2015
"Former detective Carol Jordan and profiler Tony Hill make a welcome return in this whiz-bang brain twister of an investigation into the suspicious deaths of several women that encompasses the ugly side of Internet trolls."--Boston Globe

Psychologist Tony Hill and former police detective Carol Jordan are back in Splinter the Silence--a masterful, compulsive read centered on the mysterious deaths of several women who were the victims of vicious cyberbullying. Is it violence if it's virtual? The outspoken women targeted by the increasingly cruel Internet trolls and bullies would say so. For some of them, the torrents of bile and vicious threats prove too much. They begin to silence themselves in a series of high-profile suicides. Or do they? Tony Hill isn't convinced. But he's the only one. After departing the force in a storm of grief, Carol Jordan is too busy messing up her life to care. Until she gets an unexpected second chance. Now it's game on, and the stakes have never been higher. Unpredictable and unputdownable, Splinter the Silence is a timely and disturbing look at the way the anonymity of the internet enables abuse--and a story of two of crime's most formidable enemies, confronting not just a killer but demons of their own.

"Dynamic . . . Check out this tartan noir treat."--People

"The novel is as rich in character development as it is in plot . . . We hold our breath as [the killer] plots his next murder and the team scrambles to find out who he is and what he plans to do. McDermid has delivered another stylishly written, complex thriller."--Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Powerful . . . McDermid's prose is pure pleasure to read . . . The plot is tight, the story is thrilling, the ending is as satisfying as they come . . . To read Splinter the Silence is to experience a master operating at the height of her considerable powers. Prepare to be swept away."--Mystery Scene


Read the first three books in Val McDermid’s No. 1 bestselling crime series featuring clinical psychologist Dr Tony Hill, hero of TV’s much loved WIRE IN THE BLOOD.

THE MERMAIDS SINGING

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.

Four men have been found mutilated and tortured. As fear grips the city, the police turn to clinical psychologist Tony Hill for a profile of the killer. But soon Tony becomes the unsuspecting target in a battle of wits and wills where he has to use every ounce of his professional nerve to survive.

THE WIRE IN THE BLOOD

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.

THE LAST TEMPTATION

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 trafficker. 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.


Insidious Intent

by Val McDermid

Published 1 August 2017

Longlisted for the 2018 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year

Named One of Entertainment Weekly's Best New Books

Insidious Intent, the latest installment in Val McDermid's popular series featuring psychologist Tony Hill and detective Carol Jordan, reaffirms Val McDermid's place as Britan's reigning Queen of Crime. In the north of England, single women are beginning to disappear from weddings. A wedding crasher is luring the women away--only to torch the victims' bodies in their own cars in remote locations, leaving behind no personal clues or forensic traces. It is the first official case for Carol's elite Regional Major Incident Team--and maybe the toughest case she and Tony have ever had to face. It all "comes together in an ending that hits like a bomb blast," The Globe and Mail raved. "Don't miss this one and save it for the day when you want to read straight through."