Starred review from July 26, 2010
A new chief constable, James Blake, arrives at Bradfield CID in McDermid's excellent sixth Tony Hill novel (after Beneath the Bleeding). Since Blake takes a skeptical view of both Tony's contributions as a medical consultant and the team's commitment to cold cases, Det. Chief Insp. Carol Jordan has to tread carefully. Soon deemed too expensive by Blake, Tony turns to nearby Worcester for work, where a grisly case involves the brutal murder and sexual mutilation of teenagers lured to their deaths by a killer who befriends them on a social networking Web site. Connections soon arise between Tony's case and Carol's new murder inquiry in Bradfield, which McDermid develops with her usual systematic ease until all the pieces of the disturbing puzzle fall into place. The increasingly complex and indefinable relationship between Tony and Carol provides a strong emotional undercurrent. McDermid demonstrates once again that she's as adept with matters of the heart as she is with murder.
August 1, 2010
Under pressure from every side, DCI Carol Jordan, who heads Bradfield CID's major incident team, and profiler Dr. Tony Hill are forced to work out a new series of relationships with each other.
James Blake, Bradfield's new Chief Constable, seems so impressed by the successes of the major-incident team that he's determined to disperse it among his whole force to make its members' expertise more cost-effective. His No. 1 imperative to Carol: replace high-priced consultant Tony Hill with some bright boy from the police academy. It's a bad decision, of course, not only because Bradfield is a breeding ground for serial killers (Beneath the Bleeding, 2009, etc.) but because dim, overconfident rookie DS Tim Parker can't offer any more than the vaguest generalities about who chatted with 14-year-olds Daniel Morrison and Seth Viner online and lured them out of their homes, or why he killed and castrated them in record time, without lingering over his crimes long enough to provide the obligatory sexual thrills. Ironically, it's Tony who provides the crucial intelligence needed to solve the case. Hired as a consultant by the West Mercia CID, he's been investigating the murder of 14-year-old Jennifer Maidment—a murder, he gradually realizes, that's the work of the same person Carol and her crew are seeking.
As usual in McDermid, there's so much going on—including an ancient, unsolved triple homicide and Tony's stumbling attempts to come to terms with the late father who never acknowledged him—that fans of the British procedural will find their cup running over.
(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
July 1, 2010
The Internet as a means of targeting and tormenting victims forms the backdrop of McDermids twenty-fourth mystery. First published in the UK in 2009, this thriller features RigMarole (the British equivalent of Facebook) as an effective social networking site for serial killers. Criminal profiler and clinical psychologist Tony Hill and Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan join forces once again (this is the fifth in the Tony Hill series) when a young teenage girl is found brutally murdered. This wasnt a teen likely to become a victim in the usual way, from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This was a girl whose only excitement came from RigMarole. Another teen death follows, the victim another RigMarole user, pointing Hill and Jordan to a serial killer who knows how to seduce and disappear. McDermid is both a fiendish plot strategist and a highly skilled writer, deftly delivering shocks, sometimes with no more than an out-of-place word.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)