The Torment of Others
Crime, Female Detectives, Mystery, Psychological Thriller
Val McDermid
Tony Hill & Carol Jordan, Book # 4
HarperCollins Publishers
January 1, 2004
eBook
466
English
January 18, 2023 January 23, 2023
10 Books in Translation in 2023, Cloak and Dagger, Finishing The Series, Mount TBR, Reading by the Numbers, The Backlist Reader, Translated Book Goals
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.
What I think
As with the previous book there are two cases, but at least the more interesting one is well developed. I don’t like it when the protagonists of a book get involved in crimes and for this reason I didn’t like the previous book. Here too, unfortunately, a policewoman goes undercover and it happens like the previous case. But can’t McDermid write about anything else? Despite this I liked the case and the solution, but I honestly don’t know if I will continue with the series.
I don’t like the style, the chapters are too long (I mean, one chapter was 170 pages!) and it is not clear where one scene ends and the other begins in the same chapter. Perhaps this is a defect of the eBook, I don’t know if it is the same on paper, but I found it quite irritating. I don’t know, I guess before reading the next book I’ll go look for the paperback and see what the style is like, if it’s the same I’ll stop reading.
