The Wire in the Blood is a very strong mystery-thriller police procedural from Val McDermid.
I am very psyched to have finally started reading her series of books featuring psychologist Tony Hill and homicide detective Carol Jordan. I’m not a big PBS watcher so I was unaware these books had been adapted into a popular television series. (I also didn’t know that another of my favorites, the DCI Alan Banks series by Peter Robinson has also previously appeared on PBS as well, again presumably imported from the BBC.) The Wire in the Blood is only the second book in the Hill/Jordan series and already the author has distinguished herself by the level of insight she provides on her protagonists’ thinking, inclusion of first-person accounts of the motivation and actions of the perpetrators and ruthlessness of placing her characters in mortal danger.
I found the first book (The Mermaids Singing) was needlessly gory and excessively violent in some places so I’m glad to see that in the second book McDermid leaves more to the imagination instead of including gut-churning details of bodily defilement that were a "highlight" of that first entry in the series.
The presence of Jacko Vance, one of the nation’s most popular television personalities, as a primary character (and suspect) demonstrates the author’s confidence in her craft and raises the stakes of this book to an extremely satisfying level.
I look forward to seeing how the relationship between Tony Hill and Carol Jordan will develop as well as seeing how and whether British policing will change as a result of the establishment and evolution of Hill’s national criminal profiling center.
Overall, this is a very impressive series. I find that most mystery thriller series usually improve as they develop so with the first two books easily being five-star reads I hope McDermid is able to maintain the quality for a long, long time! Surely every book in the Hill/Jordan series can’t be worthy of five stars?
Title: The Wire in the Blood.
Author: Val McDermid.
Paperback: 528 pages.
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperback.
Date Published: March 1, 2005.
Date Read: February 24, 2018.
GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★★ (5.0/5.0).
OVERALL GRADE: A (4.0/4.0).
PLOT: A+.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A.
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