Author: Val McDermid

Val McDermid is a No. 1 bestseller whose novels have been translated into more than thirty languages, and have sold over eleven million copies.

She has won many awards internationally, including the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year and the LA Times Book of the Year Award. She was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame in 2009 and was the recipient of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger for 2010. In 2011 she received the Lambda Literary Foundation Pioneer Award.

She writes full time and divides her time between Cheshire and Edinburgh.

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The Torment of Others

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The Torment of Others
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, Book # 4
HarperCollins Publishers
January 1, 2004
eBook
466
English
January 18, 2023 January 23, 2023
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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..

About the book

After the third volume of this series, Carol Jordan took a break, but Tony Hill knows she must get back to work to overcome the trauma of the previous case. Meanwhile, a new serial killer roams the streets of Bradfield and is killing prostitutes. What’s special? That this case was solved two years ago without a doubt and the killer is locked up in the psychiatric hospital where Tony has been working part-time for some time. Meanwhile, a missing child has not yet been found.

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The Last Temptation

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The Last Temptation
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, Book # 3
St. Martin's Paperbacks
February 4th 2002
Paperback
496
English
March 22, 2019 March 31, 2019

Coming to terms over her breakup with criminal profiler Dr. Tony Hill, Chief Inspector Carol Jordan plunges into a risky undercover sting: track down a European drug trafficker and gain his confidence. But she's being tracked as well-by a serial killer whose psychosexual madness is born out of the darkest corners of history. In quiet isolation, Tony Hill is laying to rest the scars of his past-until he's recruited back into business on a case he can't ignore. An evil is striking uncomfortably close to home, and casting a killer shadow over the life of his long-time colleague and sometimes lover. As the danger closes in, and as Tony and Carol cross paths to navigate the terrain of a shattered human mind, they have no one left to trust but themselves-and fear that there's no place left to run as a killer promises to fulfill his most twisted dreams.

About the book

Third book in the Tony Hill & Carol Jordan series, in which Carol and Tony have not worked together for several months. After Vance’s arrest in the previous book, Tony retires to Scotland, leaving the police profiling, to devote himself to teaching. Here he also met a woman who seems to have solved his problems. Carol, on the other hand, is about to pursue a career in the Europol but before accepting it, she must go undercover to arrest a drug and human trafficker who manages to be invisible. Will she succeed? And how can Tony help her?

Meanwhile, a ruthless serial killer wanders around Europe, targeting some university professors who only share the fact that they teach psychology.

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The Wire In the Blood

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The Wire In the Blood
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, Book # 2
HarperCollins
1997
ebook
532
English
January 14, 2019 January 21, 2019

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.

About the book

After solving the case in the previous book, The Mermaids Singing, Tony Hill has finally managed to get funds for a special task force to solve serial killer cases. In this second volume, we find Tony teaching some agents how to solve cases with psychology. He gives a task to his “pupils”, finding the connection between different cases of missing teenagers. Only Shaz sees a connection and is convinced who the culprit is, but nobody believes her. Only Tony sees that maybe she is on the right track but will he be able to stop her before she makes any mistakes?

Meanwhile, Carol Jordan is busy with her team in a case of a pyromaniac and her superiors force her to contact Tony for a psychological profile of the pyromaniac.

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The Mermaids Singing

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The Mermaids Singing
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, Book # 1
HarperCollins Publishers
1995
ebook
464
English
August 24, 2017 August 28, 2017

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...

About the Book

Apparently a TV show was made from this series, but I didn’t know… that’s quite strange for a TV addict like me.

The book starts in Italy, my country (quite surprised because I didn’t know about it or didn’t remember, I do buy books like they are water and leave them in my e-Reader while I finish others) and I didn’t know it was so old (likewise, I don’t look at the publishing date when I buy books), it still had Lira as currency! Moreover it still had floppy disks and some of you may even not know what they are…

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