Nobody gets inside the messy heads of serial killers like Dr Tony Hill. Now heading up a National Profiling Task Force, he sets his team air exercise: they are given the details of missing teenagers and asked to discover whether there is a sinister link between any of the cases. Only one officer, Shaz Bowman, comes up with a concrete theory - a theory that is ridiculed by the group... until one of their number is murdered and mutilated.

Could Bowman's outrageous Suspicion possibly be true? For Tony Hill, the murder of one of his team becomes a matter of personal revenge, and, joined again by colleague Carol Jordan, he embarks on a campaign of psychological terrorism - a game where hunter and hunted can all too easily be reversed.

Jacko's adversaries are Dr. Tony Hill, a skilled psychological profiler, and DCI Carol Jordan, Hill's former lover and someone whose judgment and skills he still values. What begins as an exercise in profiling turns deadly serious when one of Hill's young students is found brutally murdered and mutilated. Hill and Jordan pull out all the stops to find the serial killer whom they believe is responsible for the disappearance of a number of teenaged girls as well as the murder of the young police officer whom Dr. Hill was training.

Val McDermid's writing is not for the squeamish. She depicts Jacko's sadism in great detail and she doesn't shrink from killing off likeable characters. I think that McDermid went a little overboard in making Jacko Vance almost too expert in his manipulation of the public and the police. The author unfairly paints the police as naive bumblers, needing Hill and Jordan to do their sleuthing for them. I doubt that real police officers would be as vulnerable to Vance's charm.

At approximately five hundred pages, the book is a bit too long. It could have been more concise with no loss of plot or character development. A secondary plot about a serial arsonist adds little to the novel. However, McDermid keeps the suspense at a high level throughout the book and her writing is always skillful and hard-hitting. All in all, "The Wire in the Blood" is a reasonably good, but not extraordinary, psychological thriller.


Competent but Gruesome   March 21, 2002
 8 out of 8 found this review helpful

Val McDermid is a well-practiced author of British police procedural mysteries. This book is one of a series centered on the profiler Tony Hill, whose methods are mistrusted by more conventional police officers. In this case, the serial killer is a high-profile public personality described as the third most trusted person in England. McDermid's descriptions of the hunt for this murderer, including the tangents and false leads, are well done. On the down side, the reader may have trouble keeping track of the many characters with common English names. McDermid's graphic portrayals of the killer's brutality may churn some stomachs.


Complex and imperfect, but still worth reading   February 20, 2001
 7 out of 7 found this review helpful

Val McDermid is one of the most adventurous current crime writers, a welcome change from those whose every new book is a gradually less profitable clone of their previous one. This story, a sequel to the excellent 'The Mermaids Singing', is actually not much like it at all. The main characters return, but that's where the similarity ends. The Mermaids Singing focused in on several ghastly serial murders and the efforts of criminal profiler Tony Hill to get a grasp of the killer's mind, while battling the personal demons that seem to afflict every fictional police psychologist.

In 'The Wire in the Blood', girls are disappearing and dying and we guess quite early on who's responsible - the book details the efforts of the police to link the killings and determine the killer's identity. There are many stories in this book, and in the hands of a less skilled writer it could easily have fallen apart. Even with this writer's talent, there's a lot going on to keep track of, we're introduced in detail to a huge crowd of individuals in the first few chapters and there are lots of threads to follow.

The centerpiece of the plot is the return of Tony Hill, this time teaching a class of baby profilers, who all bond together and function as a forensic profiling collegiate ensemble when one of their own number disappears after getting too close to the truth. As well as heaps of information about profiling itself, the book offers insight into how territorial turf wars and the resentment by old-time beat police of the 'mumbo jumbo' of psychological tools can impact effective crime fighting - unlike his fictional FBI counterparts, Tony Hill does not ride in on a white horse as much as bang on the door and beg to be heard. Like many of Ms McDermid's books it's populated with strong females, with a nod of approval to gay women.

This isn't a perfect book - there are patches of coarse writing, some things are a bit hackneyed (hidden basement full of custom torture equipment...), the symbolism of the victim's injuries is over the top, and Dr Hill is only able to feel fully understood once his beloved, a Police Officer, also has 'blood on her hands'... hmmm. But it's interesting, touching on things most crime books don't, and is far better than many much better known best-sellers.


Excellent cat and mouse game   August 26, 2002
 6 out of 7 found this review helpful

In THE MERMAIDS SINGING, Val McDermid introduced her readers to Dr. Tony Hill and Detective Sergeant Carol Jordan. They had teamed up to track down a serial killer who brutally tortured his victims before killing them. They respected each other and worked well together. However, the case took a lot out them and they started to drift apart.

Several months have passed since this horrifying case. Carol Jordan has been promoted and now she is Detective Chief Inspector and in charge of her own group of detectives in the town of Seaford. They are currently working on a case involving a series of arson fires happening around town. Jordan's squad is reluctantly investigating the case until one person dies. Jordan shows them no mercy and works them hard in finding out who is responsible of creating those fires. She will take this case very personally before, during, and after the suspect is arrested.

When we first met Dr. Hill in THE MERMAIDS SINGING he was heading a task force studying the viability of using profilers in police investigations. It was decided that the project is a go and Tony is training a special group of police officers in investigative profiling techniques. The author introduces each one of the students and explains the reason why they decided to become profilers. One day Dr. Hill gives them an exercise involving the unsolved disappearances of several teenage girls all around the United Kingdom. Tony invites Carol to the class to see if she would lend her technical expertise to the class discussion. Most of the students take this project as regular assignment but one of them sees it as much more. She analyzes every single aspect of their disappearances and tries to find a unifying factor. What she discovers is so outrageous that she discusses it in the class. She is ridiculed but undeterred. It is not until someone in her class is brutally murdered that Tony decides to do his own investigation.

The reader learns the identity of the kidnapper and killer earlier on in the book before any of the other characters. We learn why he is how he is and why he does what he does. McDermid evens spends the time in giving developing the characters and learning what they are thinking to some of the victims before they are brutally murdered. It might be considered to be a bit sadist but just because they are characters in the book it does not mean that they cannot be disposable. Some readers might be upset with this but it helps to strengthen the plot.

Tony Hill, Carol Jordan and the students all have a personal stake in bringing the murderer to justice. He thinks that he is invincible. Eventually at the end of the book there is a showdown and the bad guy is stopped. The villain is one of the most evil characters in books right now probably second to Hannibal Lecter. The author opens the possibility of bringing this character back. It will be a pleasure to learn about the repercussions of this book in her next Tony Hill/Carol Jordan booked called THE LAST TEMPTATION. Even if the villain does not return it will be nice to find out what happened afterward even if it is only a few sentences.


Occasionally gritty, but predictable and cliched   August 14, 2002
 5 out of 9 found this review helpful

I picked this novel up at a cheap booksale, so it's hard to be bitter for buying it. The premise involves a celebrity, Jack Vance, who on cross-country promotional trips happens to take teenage girls, rape and kill them. Nobody links these missing girls together until Shaz Bowman, of the National Profiling Task Force, correlates these disappearances with Vance's publicity stunts. It's her job to convince everybody else of what she already knows - Jack is a serial killer.

I must admit - I'm unfamiliar with Val's other work, so if clarifying information happened to be in the prequel, The Mermaids Singing, I'm sorry for having missed it. Still, I was thoroughly unimpressed with this novel, for a number of reasons:

1) Predictability. Beyond about page 150 (where a major, thoroughly unexpected event, and only truly gritty point in the novel, in my opinion), I was not once surprised or intrigued with anything that happened. I knew they were going to chase this guy. I knew what he had done. I knew they were going to catch him. As much as I was hoping there would be there was not a single plot twist or unexpected turn after this point. The conflicts they encounter along the way (disbelieving superior officers, etc.) seem just there to disguise how predictable the plot is becoming. It didn't fool me. And I doubt it will you, either. You can predict the plot fully after 150 pages. No kidding.

2) Surprise surprise: the good guys are always right, the bad guys always wrong. It's a formula - if a sympathetic character says it, it's correct. And I'm not talking about the main dilemma, either. It applies there, of course (Shaz' theory is correct), but also to a parallel arson case the group is pursuing. In other words - the good guys are just too good (which leaves little room for moral conflict, unfortunately). I didn't believe any of it. And I doubt you will, either.

3) The bad guy is too sloppy. I know he's a sociopath and all, but Tony Hill gets all of his clues from . . . well . . . from the bad guy! He's caught in his own lies repeatedly, and leaves one of his murders open for investigation. If he was intent on not getting caught, he wouldn't display his kills! It's that simple. But then Val wouldn't have a novel, so . . .

I must say, though, that Val's writing is very good. She has a good style, and she excels as graphic descriptions, which are occasionally gut-wrenching. This novel also offers interest commentary on sham marriages. Best part of the novel, in my opinion.

I'd recommend a novel in this one's place, but I haven't read any of her other work. If you want a look into the mind of a sociopath that is actually unpredictable and uncliched, pick up The Silence of the Lambs, but I don't think I needed to tell anybody that.

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