Recently a reader pointed me to this writer as one of her favorites from the black gender. So I got closer to his works through trusted readers who nourish this blog.
Scottish and from the same litter as ian rankin, Val McDermid it professes within that purist narrative that drinks from the police and derives in series firmly established in the nuclear protagonists of the investigator on duty. Then there is the imprint of each of these characters.
The journalist with the pretense of detective Lindsay Gordon, unavailable to discouragement and with a love for danger…; the researcher Kate Brannigan capable of facing any case from a dark side of Manchester discovered for the occasion…; or the most recent tandem of Tony Hill and Carol Jordan, between them summarizing all sorts of complementary aspects of an investigation.
Much to discover and with which to enjoy the black genre with an aftertaste of pure police. One of those great best-selling authors that remains the perfect wardrobe in any bookstore. This time we will focus on the saga that my source has read in full, the cases of Tony Hill and Carol Jordan.
Val McDermid's Top 3 Recommended Novels
Under the bloody hand
The world of football is always a good setting for any plot. (I myself can attest to this with my novel of black dyes «Real Saragossa 2.0«) With all the attention focused on the football universe, delving into a plot capable of uncovering misery, of disrupting common places loaded with clichés such as football, is always an interesting exercise in literary voyeurism. Even more so when the reading transmits that growing tension, McDermid's own hallmark.
Robbie Bishop, Bradfield Vics midfielder, has been killed with a strange toxin. The news causes a huge impact, because the footballer was a star very loved by the fans. The team made up of Dr. Tony Hill and Inspector Carol Jordan begins to investigate, but pieces are missing to complete the puzzle as there seem to be no clear motives that could explain the crime.
However, everything is precipitated when a bomb explodes in the Bradfield Vics stadium, causing a massacre, and also a second poisoned person dies.
Is it a terrorist act? Of a personal revenge? Or something much more sinister? The resolution of the mystery of this new installment of the adventures of the two investigators created by Val McDermid (Tony Hill and Carol Jordan) keeps the reader in tension until the last page.
the singing of the Sirens
One of the most suggestive aspects of the black genre narrators is how they face the duality between crime and consequent death. Because one thing is to investigate the modus operandi of the murderer on duty and another how the author addresses the sinister consequences of death itself. McDermid manages in this book, surely thanks to the team of investigators, to tackle many angles in a gruesome serial murder case.
A serial killer is spreading terror in the small town of Bradfield. The bodies of four brutally tortured and mutilated men have been found. The police are disoriented because of the lack of leads. Due to the depraved way of acting of the murderer, he decides to resort to the collaboration of Tony Hill, an expert psychologist in the study of criminal minds.
Hill, used to associating with murderers already incarcerated, must now face a monster who is at large, at the risk of becoming his next victim. The Song of the Sirens is the first book in a popular series of novels starring Tony Hill and Carol Jordan.
This work, which Val McDermid published when she already had a long career as a writer behind her back, has been a resounding success and has achieved high critical recognition, thanks to a shocking story that does not give a second of respite to the reader.
The wire in the veins
A recurring idea of the criminal capable of disguising himself as normal, of chaining his routines without problem until he voluntarily and treacherously transforms into Mr. Hyde that leads him to kill out of animosity and sinister drives. In those cases, the undoubted proximity, the suspicion like a cold breath on the neck, turns into maximum tension for the reader.
Dozens of teenage girls have disappeared across the country. There is no apparent connection between them, they are just girls who ran away from home and had bad luck. Or maybe there is something that connects all these cases, a hidden pattern, a murderer in the shadows?
Criminal profiling expert Dr. Tony Hill sets his team in motion, and with the help of Carol Jordan they begin to investigate. Someone ventures a theory that seems far-fetched and provokes disbelief.
But when one of Hill's pupils is killed and mutilated, the wackiness seems to start to make sense, because the most normal and charming person in the world can turn out to be a disturbed criminal ...