The Torment of Others

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The Number One bestselling crime series featuring Tony Hill, hero of TV’s Wire in the Blood, written by the award-winning Val McDermid. This is a psychological thriller – and serial killer – that will keep you up at night.For some, there is nothing so sweet, so thrilling, as the torment of others …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…From Publishers WeeklyThe latest addition to McDermid's dark and gritty police procedurals, which have become even more popular thanks to the BBC America TV program The Wire in the Blood, finds the series' usual main protagonists, psychologist/profiler Dr. Tony Hill and Det. Chief Insp. Carol Jordan, joined by DI Don Merrick, elevated from the ranks of supporting players. Topping their docket are two serial killers: a child molester who murders and hides his young male victims and the Creeper, who tortures and slays prostitutes using the identical modus operandi of a killer firmly ensconced in a mental facility. McDermid's strength is the engaging and multidimensional characters he creates on both sides of the law. The book was a finalist for the CWA's 2004 Gold Dagger Award, but this audio abridgment is more interested in story than in character. There are several effective set pieces, notably an undercover sting that goes bad, resulting in the abduction and torture of a novice policewoman, and Merrick's life and death struggle with the child predator. At these points, Doyle's competent but undistinguished performance rises to the challenge. But by trimming away the novels' strongest element—its vibrant characters—the abridgment highlights the novel's weakest element: the less than credible sequences leading to the identity and capture of the Creeper. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistStarred Review In the latest in the series starring forensic psychiatrist and criminal profiler Dr. Tony Hill (which has become the basis of a TV series on BBC America), Hill, finishing out a teaching appointment at St. Andrews, finds himself relieved to leave academia for a real case. The Bradfield Metropolitan Police once again seek his advice, this time regarding two missing children, a murdered seven-year-old kidnapped 15 months earlier, and a newly kidnapped eight-year-old. At the same time, a murder victim is discovered, killed in the same fashion as the victims of a man who has been in a mental institution for two years. McDermid is unusual in her ability to keep the suspense high while constructing social mysteries that are far-ranging in their implications--for example, she touches on the societal forces at work today (such as the lack of true neighborhoods) that make it easier for kids to be victimized. One of the most compelling features of this latest entry is the torment that returning Bradfield DCI Carol Jordan (brutally assaulted in the last mystery) feels as she and her team track down the current murderer while she struggles with the memory shards from the last case. McDermid brings to her mysteries an unusual capacity for compassion, both for victims and for the detectives whose lives are shattered tracking down the killers. Connie FletcherCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved