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

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

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

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…