Sarah Broadhurst's view...
Val McDermid is the winner of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger Award
2010, which honours outstanding achievement in the field of crime
writing.
If you have not read Val McDermid you may have caught the ITV series of The Wire in the Blood, starring Dr Tony Hill. This features him too in another complex, baffling psychological thriller which is far better than the TV. It’s unexpected twists, its growing suspense, its intelligence and dark compulsion can never truly be captured on the small screen. You’ve got to read it.
Comparisons: Karin Slaughter, Mo Hayder, Tess Gerritsen.
Similar this month: Hilary Bonner, Kathy Reichs.
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Synopsis
The Torment of Others by Val McDermid
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...
Reviews
‘One of McDermid's finest, which is saying a lot' Marcel Berlins, The Times
'Val McDermid is an intelligent, supremely talented novelist and with this latest tale, she is writing at the height of her power’ Allan Laing, Glasgow Herald
'Complex, combative and nuanced' Barry Forshaw, Express
'Val McDermid, as ever, is adept at engendering irresistible suspense' Patricia Craig, Times Literary Supplement
‘There are some terrific twists: just as the reader feels something has been securely settled, that we can identify a perpetrator to our satisfaction, McDermid gives a new jerk to the storyline and the chase is on again' Jane Jakeman, Scotland on Sunday
‘No one compares to McDermid when it comes to the deviant side of human nature’ Maxim Jakubowski, Guardian
‘This is McDermid on top form - pass the valium’ Daily Mail
About the Author
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Val McDermid grew up in a Scottish mining community then read English at Oxford. She was a journalist for sixteen years, spending the last three years as Northern Bureau Chief of a national Sunday tabloid. Now a full-time writer, she divides her time between Cheshire and Northumberland.
In 2010 she received the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger Award, which honours outstanding achievement in the field of crime writing. Margaret Murphy, then chair of the CWA, said: "The
CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger award acknowledges the work of an author who
has made an outstanding contribution to the genre. Val McDermid is a
worthy winner whose work has entertained and thrilled millions of
readers as well as many more who have enjoyed the TV adaptations her
books have inspired."
McDermid has achieved major success with her series of books featuring criminal profiler, Dr Tony Hill. The first book in the series, The Mermaids Singing, won the 1995 Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year, while the second, The Wire in the Blood, lends its name to the highly acclaimed television series featuring Robson Green as Tony Hill. The Last Temptation was a Top Ten bestseller. The Torment of Others came out in paperback in 2005. Beneath the Bleeding came out in summer 2007 and went straight into the Top Ten.
A Place of Execution was awarded the LA Times Book of the Year Award, and has gone onto become the most nominated award-winning thriller in the USA since 2000. Killing the Shadows received critical acclaim on its release in 2000. 'The Grave Tattoo' was published in 2006 in hardback and stayed in the Top Ten for over a month. 'A Darker Domain' is due for publication in 2008.
A Place of Execution was adapted into a successful ITV drama with Juliet Stephenson. Val McDermid is also a regular contributor to Radio 4, where she recently presented the series From Ban to Booker and was recently awarded Stonewall's Writer of the Year.
McDermid has also written six crime novels featuring Manchester PI Kate Brannigan, and the last of these, Star Struck, won the Grand Prix des Romans d'Adventure in France. A further series of novels featured journalist-sleuth Lindsay Gordon, with the latest of these, Hostage to Murder, published in November 2003.
She was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame in 2009.
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Categories
Crime / Who-dunit
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