The Mermaids Singing
Synopsis:
You always remember the first time. Isn’t that what they say about sex? How much more true it is of murder…
Up till now, the only serial killers Tony Hill had encountered were safely behind bars. This one’s different – this one’s on the loose. In the northern town of Bradfield four men have been found mutilated and tortured. Fear grips the city; no man feels safe. Clinical psychologist Tony Hill is brought in to profile the killer. A man with more than enough sexual problems of his own, Tony himself becomes the unsuspecting target in a battle of wits and wills where he has to use every ounce of his professional skill and personal nerve to survive.
Series: Tony Hill & Carol Jordan Series
UK Publisher: Harper Collins
Literary agent: David Higham Associates
Publication date UK: 1995
- Book 1 –The Mermaids Singing (HarperCollins, 1995)
- Book 2 –The Wire in the Blood (HarperCollins, 1997)
- Book 3 –The Last Temptation (HarperCollins, 2002)
- Book 4 –The Torment of Others (HarperCollins, 2004)
- Book 5 –Beneath the Bleeding (HarperCollins, 2007)
- Book 6 –Fever of the Bone (HarperCollins, 2009)
- Book 7 –The Retribution (HarperCollins, 2011)
- Book 8 –Cross and Burn (HarperCollins, 2013)
- Book 9 –Splinter The Silence (Little, Brown Book Group, 2015)
- Book 10–Insidious Intent (Little, Brown Book Group, 2017)
- Book 11–How The Dead Speak (Little, Brown Book Group, 2019)
Buy This Book
Winner Of The Crime Writers’ Association Macallan Gold Dagger Award For Best Crime Novel Of The Year – 1995
Reviews…
Compelling and shocking
— Minette Walters
Terrifying but stylish, cruel and compassionate. Truly, horribly good.
— Mail on Sunday, Frances Fyfield
Gripping, intelligent stuff.
— The Times, Marcel Berlins
A superb psychological thriller.
— Cosmopolitan
Think of psychological profiling and TV’s Cracker springs to mind, but McDermid’s latest thriller goes one better — a must for all crime fiction lovers.
— Company
A deliciously gruesome serial killer thriller. Ms McDermid finds new ways to shock and revolt us.
— New York Times
Turns the serial killer subgenre upside down with compelling but gruesome results. McDermid has many startling surprises in store and brilliantly pulls the rug out from under our feet, exploding the psychological cliches commonly found in more one-dimensional portraits of the twisted criminal mind.
— San Francisco Chronicle
This is without doubt the best book by McDermid that I have read: exciting, well-written, fast-moving and well-deserving of the [Gold Dagger] award… you’ll not find a better book this year.
— Books Magazine
[McDermid] excels because she explores the mind of a murderer, gradually teasing out details; then switches effortlessly to the police investigation… MERMAIDS is… well-written, tense and exciting. It is a book which pulls the reader, and which lingers in the imagination long after the last page has been turned.
— Yorkshire Post
