The Wire in the Blood
Written by Val McDermid
Narrated by Michael Tudor Barnes
4/5
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About this audiobook
Val McDermid
Val McDermid is a No.1 bestseller whose novels have been translated into more than thirty languages, and have sold more than sixteen million copies. She has won many awards internationally, including the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year. She was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame in 2009, was the recipient of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger in 2010. Val writes full time and lives in Edinburgh and the East Neuk of Fife.
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Reviews for The Wire in the Blood
33 ratings17 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I can see why this became a hit TV show... My only gripe is a personal reaction - I don't like mystery thrillers that reveal the killer at the beginning and weave the story around their capture...
Looking forward to reading the rest of the series. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A good crime thriller featuring McDermids excellent character: the criminal profiler Tony Hill. The plot is a good one with the suspect identified early on and then the thrust of the novel is how can a conviction be secured. There is a sub plot involving an arsonist that runs parallel with the main investigation that impacts on the central characters. However it is yet another story where Home office officers and police officers are forced to act outside of their command structures to get their man and this part of the story stretches credibility at times. I also thought that some of the secondary characters were "stock characters" like the successful tough lesbian police officer and the ignorant bigoted Yorkshire CID men. A good thriller/detective story with some suspense and horror.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Listened again after several years. Still an amazing book. Set the bar high back in 1997.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I haven't read the first book in the series, so wasn't familiar with the main characters or the background. It was a enjoyable book though, although I did feel like they team had things a little bit too easy and clues etc fell into their laps a little unbelievably!I'll certainly read more of this series, perhaps catching up on the first book before I get too far ahead...
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I'm still hooked. Tony's trying to deal with his experiences during his last case by training a profiling unit. The unit doesn't get a great reception, naturally, and things are made worse when one of Tony's students goes missing. It was only supposed to be an exercise after all, not a real case. There was no way she should have found a cluster and certainly no way there could have been a link between them. Different from the first because the reader knows who the killer is from the get-go and the tension comes from wondering if he'll be found out in time, and if indeed anyone will believe he is the killer. After all, his TV persona is so caring, and he's always doing all this charity work. It could never be him. TV would never lie to us.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A decent novel about profiling and catching serial killers, set in England. Good storytelling, and more thrilling toward the end, but a bit too much bureaucratic discussion of police forces and setting up a new task force... which slowed the pacing of the book. Worth a read, and will certainly continue in the series, hoping for more concentration on the profiling and police work.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Horribly gruesome.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Rather gory but thrilling shocker.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5From quite close to the beginning you know who dunnit, it's the trying to pin the crime on the perpetrator that's the story in this one. He's so completely immoral and cunning and I really did root for the good guys to succeed but could also see where they encountered pitfalls that really got in the way.A celebrity is kidnapping young women but he's very clever and the evidence is scant, can Tony and Carol manage to find all the evidence to pin it on him, or will one of Tony's students get the blame for a fellow student's death?Enjoyable, but pretty gruesome, I want to see the series now!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book is one of a series of books by Val McDermid about the neurotic, socially inept but brilliant criminal profiler, Tony Hill, and assertive, maverick detective Carol Jordan, and the odd, dependent relationship that develops between them as they solve crimes together. This story (the second in the series), is about proving that a popular celebrity is a killer, rather than catching a killer. As such, it is different from the other books in the series, but still satisfying. There is a good cast of supporting characters, all of whom are realistically multi-faceted and interesting.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Meh. I'm really not getting any warm fuzzies for this series. Nor any reaction really.
I was hoping that the second book in the series would be more interesting and getting away from the scene setting that took up so much of The Mermaids Singing, but no...a large part of the book is still about workplace politics and Tony Hill's struggle to find acceptance of his profiling task force within the police.
Blah, blah, policing, blah, blah...
And I have literally no interest in the relationship between Tony and Carol. Shaz was an interesting character but there was not that much interaction between her and the rest of the characters.
The fact that we know from the start who the killer is, does not help the situation. Instead of reading on to guess who may have done it is practically spoilt and for me there isn't that much fun in following the profilers trying to balance their professional aspirations with their personal entanglements.
So, whilst I seem to enjoy Val's standalone novels, I just can't find anything in this series that resonates with me. At all.
DNF @ 55%. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I love Val McDermid's writing. She is truly amazing and I'm glad to be reading another of her series. Her writing is so descriptive you feel like you are right in the same room. The characters are well developed and makes for interesting reading. I especially like the team of Tony Hill and Carol Jordon and I am looking forward to reading the next book in the series.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I have not read the first book in this series, so all references to it went over my head. That's my own fault, though. I was positively suprised with this book, I have not been the biggest fan of McDermid. This was pretty violent and some of the deaths came somewhat unexpected to me. Not too attached to the characters, all in all this was a holiday read of the type read and leave at the airport.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I first found these books through, of all things, Netflix; I started watching the BBC series and found that the series was based on Val McDermid's books. The books are quite good. A bit gory, but the police procedural coupled with the psychological profiling makes these books fascinating.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5It's a page turner, though a little too gothic for my taste. I prefer the dry style of Ian Rankin, who I had read shortly before reading this work. I'd probably buy another, though.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Across the country, dozens of teenage girls have vanished. Authorities are convinced they're runaways with just the bad luck of the draw to connect them. It's the job of criminal profilers Dr. Tony Hill and Carol Jordan to look for a pattern. They've spent years exploring the psyches of madmen. But sane men kill, too. And when they hide in plain sight, they can be difficult to find...He's handsome and talented, rich and famous--a notorious charmer with the power to seduce...and the will to destroy. No one can believe what he's capable of. No one can imagine what he's already done. And no one can fathom what he's about to do next. Until one of Hill's students is murdered--the first move in a sick and violent game for three players. Now, of all the killers Hill and Jordan have hunted, none has been so ruthless, so terrifyingly clever, and so brilliantly elusive as the killer who's hunting them...
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Chilling, disturbing and makes you think a lot. Very challenging to read!