The Mermaids Singing by Val McDermid

The Mermaids Singing is the first book in the Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series by Val McDermid. It was first published in 1995. I’ve recently been getting into Val McDermid, after seeing her at Cheltenham Literature Festival last year. The Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series is perhaps her most well known. The sequel to The Mermaids Singing is The Wire in the Blood, which was adapted for a series on ITV between 2002 and 2008.

Four men have been found mutilated and murdered in the gay quarter of the fictional city of Bradfield (which appears to be in West Yorkshire). The police are finally forced to admit they have a serial killer on their hands – a particularly clever and controlled one. The police bring in clinical psychologist, Dr Tony Hill, to work with them on a profile of the killer. DCI Carol Jordan works alongside him, as he tries to get inside the mind of the murderer.

Each chapter focuses on the investigation, followed by a section from the murderer. The murderer describes the way he stalks the victims, what he plans to do to them and then the disappointment when things inevitably don’t turn out as he’d hoped. But he loves being clever and beating the police at their own game. It is insulting to him when the police think he hadn’t committed some of his own crimes.

The blurb on the book says: “Soon Tony becomes the unsuspecting target… “. Actually, it wasn’t that soon. It was pretty late in the book. But it was really scary. Luckily Carol and her colleagues had already had a bit of a breakthrough. And I already knew that Tony appears in another eight books.

The Mermaids Singing is a real page turner. It doesn’t seem very dated, apart from the usual thing about outdated software, fax machines and pagers. Having gone from reading Val McDermid’s most recent book – Past Lying – to one of her earliest, I don’t feel her writing has got either better or worse in that time. From what I’ve read so far, I’ve loved them all and don’t think you will find a bad Val McDermid novel.

The murders in The Mermaids Singing really are some of the most gruesome I’ve ever read – and I’ve read a lot of crime books! So if that’s not your cup of tea, it is probably best avoided. But if you like a detective story, I would definitely recommend it.