Showing results by author "Val McDermid"

When a teenage joyrider crashes a stolen car and ends up in a coma, a routine DNA test reveals a connection to a twisted unsolved murder from 22 years before. Meanwhile, Karen Pirie finds herself irresistibly drawn into another mystery that she has no business investigating; a mystery that has its roots in a terrorist bombing two decades ago. And again, she finds that nothing is as it seems....

On a freezing morning four drunken students stumble upon the body of a woman in the snow. Rosie has been raped, stabbed and left for dead in a cemetery. The only suspects are the four young men now stained with her blood. Twenty-five years later the police mount a cold-case review of Rosie’s unsolved murder, and the four are still suspects. But when two of them die in suspicious circumstances, it seems that someone is pursuing their own brand of justice....

When a skeleton is discovered hidden at the top of a gothic Victorian building in Edinburgh, which is scheduled for renovation, Cold Case Squad detective Karen Pirie is given the task of identifying the decades-old bones. Her investigation leads her back to past conflicts, false identities and buried secrets...

Up until now the only serial killers Tony Hill had encountered were safely behind bars. This one’s different - this one’s on the loose. Four men have been found mutilated and tortured. As fear grips the city, the police turn to clinical psychologist Tony Hill for a profile of the killer. But soon Tony becomes the unsuspecting target in a battle of wits and wills, where he has to use every ounce of his professional nerve to survive.

When a body is discovered in the remote depths of the Highlands, DCI Karen Pirie finds herself in the right place at the right time. Unearthed with someone's long-buried inheritance, the victim seems to belong to the distant past - until new evidence suggests otherwise, and Karen is called in to unravel a case where nothing is as it seems. It's not long before an overheard conversation draws Karen into the heart of a different case, however - a shocking crime she thought she'd already prevented. As she inches closer to the twisted truths at the centre of these murders, it becomes clear that she's dealing with a version of justice terrifyingly different to her own....

It's 1984. The miners' strike is dividing the country. In a struggling coal-mining town, the miners and their families are living at the edge of their resources. On the 14th of December, five miners break ranks to travel to Nottingham and work. For those who stay behind, this is an unforgivable betrayal. Twenty-three years later, a young woman is asking the police to trace her missing father. Miner Mick Prentice vanished, never to be seen again.

Young girls are disappearing around the country, and there is nothing to connect them to one another. Dr Tony Hill sets his team an exercise: they are given the details and asked to discover links between the cases. Only one officer comes up with a theory that is ridiculed...until one of their own is murdered. For Tony Hill the murder becomes a matter for personal revenge, and, joined by colleague Carol Jordan, he embarks on a game where hunter and hunted can all too easily be reversed.

In the Peak District village of Scarsdale, 13-year-old girls didn’t just run away. So when Alison Carter vanished in the winter of '63, everyone knew it was a murder. Catherine Heathcote remembers the case well - a child herself when Alison vanished. Now a journalist, she persuades DI George Bennett to speak of the hunt for Alison. But when a fresh lead emerges, Bennett tries to stop the story - plunging Catherine into a world of buried secrets and revelations.

Freelance journalist Lindsay Gordon is strapped for cash. Why else would she agree to cover a fund-raising gala at a girls' public school? But when the star attraction is found garrotted with her own cello string minutes before she is due on stage, Lindsay finds herself investigating a vicious murder. Who would have wanted Lorna Smith Cooper dead? And who could have slipped out of the hall at just the right time to commit this cold-blooded crime?

Meet Tony Hill's most twisted adversary - a killer with a shopping list of victims, driven by the most perverted of desires. The murder and mutilation of teenager Jennifer Maidment is horrific enough on its own. But it's not long before Tony realises it's just the start of a brutal and ruthless campaign that's targeting an apparently unconnected group of young people. Tony battles to find the answers that will give him personal and professional satisfaction in his most testing investigation yet.

When psychological profiler Tony Hill comes across a series of suicides among women tormented by vicious online predators, he begins to wonder if there is more to these tragedies than meets the eye. Could it be murder? But what kind of serial killer wants his crimes to stay hidden? Tony and DCI Carol Jordan begin the hunt for the most dangerous and terrifying kind of killer - someone who has nothing to fear and nothing to lose.

In 2010, Val McDermid received the prestigious CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger Award, which honours outstanding achievement in the field of crime writing. Her last novel, Trick of the Dark, hit the best-seller lists, and now she returns with The Retribution. Tony Hill, criminal profiler and hero of TV's Wire in the Blood, is back in a terrifying psychological thriller. Teaming up once again with Carol Jordan, the pair face a serial killer unlike any they have ever encountered before.

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 with the conviction of Derek Tyler. But Tyler's been locked up in a mental institution for two years, barely speaking a word. Criminal psychologist Dr Tony Hill thinks this is not a copycat murder but something much stranger. Hill heads towards a terrifying face-off with one of the most perverse killers he has ever encountered….

Five-year-old Jimmy Higgins is brazenly snatched from the middle of a busy airport; but this is no ordinary kidnapping. Jimmy’s mother is Scarlett, a reality TV star who, dying of cancer, entrusted the boy to her friend Stephanie Harker. Now Stephanie, reaching into the past to discover the motive behind the abduction, soon encounters a shocking tale of murder and conspiracy, and is faced by the most difficult choice of her life.

When Robbie Bishop, star midfielder for the Bradfield Vics, is poisoned by a rare and deadly toxin, profiler Dr Tony Hill and trusted colleague DCI Carol Jordan have their work cut out for them. Then a bomb explodes in the football stadium, causing massive casualties - and another man dies from poisoning. Is there a link between the cases? What are the motives for these crimes? The clock is ticking, and the death toll keeps rising....

In the north of England, single women are beginning to disappear from weddings. A pattern soon becomes clear: someone is luring the women away, only to leave the victims' bodies in their own burned-out cars in remote locations. Tony and Carol are called upon to investigate, but this may be the toughest case they've ever had to face. Meanwhile, Detective Sergeant Paula McIntyre and her partner, Elinor, must deal with a cruel cyber blackmailer targeting their teenage ward, Torin.

A twisted killer targeting psychologists has left a grisly trail across Europe. Dr Tony Hill, expert at mapping the minds of murderers, is reluctant to get involved. But then the next victim is much closer to home....Meanwhile his former partner, DCI Carol Jordan, is working undercover in Berlin on a dangerous operation to trap a millionaire trafficker. When the game turns nasty, Tony is the only person she can call on for help.

A protest group hits the headlines when unrest at a women's peace camp explodes into murder. Already on the scene, journalist Lindsay Gordon desperately tries to strike a balance between personal and professional responsibilities. As she peels back the layers of deception surrounding the protest and its opponents, she finds that no one - ratepayer or reporter, policeman or peace woman - seems wholly above suspicion. Then Lindsay uncovers a truth that even she can scarcely believe.... 

The dead talk. To the right listener, they tell us all about themselves: how they lived, how they died--and who killed them. Val McDermid uncovers the secrets of forensic medicine with groundbreaking research and her own experience. Along the way you’ll wonder at how maggots collected from a corpse can help determine time of death and how a DNA trace a millionth the size of a grain of salt can be used to convict a killer.

Why would anyone want to kill Penny Varnavides, best-selling author of the Teen Dreams series? Her demise can't be the freak accident it first appeared - it's an exact replica of the murder method in her forthcoming book. Only three people knew the plot of Penny's unpublished novel: her literary agent, her editor and her ex-girlfriend, Meredith. In an effort to clear Meredith, Lindsay Gordon delves beneath the glittering facade of the seemingly glamorous world of London publishing in search of a murderer.