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The Mermaids Singing
- Narrated by: Graham Roberts
- Length: 14 hrs and 12 mins
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Publisher's summary
The bodies of four men have been discovered in the town of Bradfield. Enlisted to investigate is criminal psychologist Tony Hill. Even for a seasoned professional, the series of mutilation sex murders is unlike anything he's encountered before. But profiling the psychopath is not beyond him. Hill's own past has made him the perfect man to comprehend the killer's motives. It's also made him the perfect victim. A game has begun for the hunter and the hunted. But as Hill confronts his own hidden demons, he must also come face-to-face with an evil so profound he may not have the courage - or the power - to stop it....
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Dear Elizabeth, I've been watching you. I hope to see you...soon. Liz Cafferky is on the up. Rescued from her dark past by the owner of a drop-in centre for older men, Liz soon finds herself as the charity's face - and the unwilling darling of the Dublin media. Amidst her claustrophobic fame, Liz barely notices a letter from a new fan. But then one of the centre's clients is brutally murdered, and Elizabeth receives another, more sinister note. Running from her own ghosts, Liz is too scared to go to the police.
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Fantastic!!
- By Brett McAteer on 03-06-19
By: Sinead Crowley
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Forward Slash
- By: Mark Edwards, Louise Voss
- Narrated by: Jessica Ball, Ben Elliot
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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He's posted on your wall. He's following you on Twitter. He knows where you are right now.... When Amy receives an email from her older sister, Becky, announcing that she's off travelling and 'don't try to find me', she is worried. Becky would never do such a thing on a whim. Amy - who is recovering from an abusive relationship that has left her terrified of love - soon finds that Becky had started using online dating sites. Aided by Becky's neighbour, Gary, Amy sets about tracking down the men her sister had dated.
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I Wanted to Love It, but was Disappointed
- By MarisaReads on 12-31-16
By: Mark Edwards, and others
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London Falling
- The Shadow Police, Book One
- By: Paul Cornell
- Narrated by: Damian Lynch
- Length: 13 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Detective Inspector James Quill is about to complete the drugs bust of his career. Then his prize suspect, Rob Toshack, is murdered in custody. Furious, Quill pursues the investigation, co-opting intelligence analyst Lisa Ross and undercover cops Costain and Sefton. But nothing about Toshack’s murder is normal. Toshack had struck a bargain with a vindictive entity, whose occult powers kept Toshack one step ahead of the law - until his luck ran out. Now, the team must find a 'suspect' who can bend space and time and alter memory itself. And they will kill again.
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Team Quill
- By Tango on 05-03-15
By: Paul Cornell
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A Feast of Carrion
- By: Keith McCarthy
- Narrated by: Sean Barrett
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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St Benjamin's Medical School is the greatest of its kind, any death occurring within its walls would have created ripples within the academic world, but the death of Nikki Exner is far from being ordinary. Raped, and then grotesquely executed, her theatrical murder horrifies everyone. John Eisenmenger, a former forensic pathologist, finds himself dragged unwillingly into the case. Teaming up with solicitor Helena Flemming, Eisenmenger sets out to discover what really did happen to Nikki Exner.
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excellent book
- By Yves on 06-27-09
By: Keith McCarthy
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Dead to Me
- By: Cath Staincliffe
- Narrated by: Julia Barrie
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Detective Constable Janet Scott is subtle and reliable, a diplomatic thinker with a wry sense of humor. She's put in the time and seen it all, but has no desire for the boss's job—she loves her own too much. Rachel Bailey couldn't be more different—she's energetic, impulsive, and ambitious, and has just been transferred to the Manchester murder squad. Their commander thinks Rachel's intuition could make her a great cop, but has reservations about her shoot-first-think-later approach, so she partners her with Janet.
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Three fascinating women
- By Lynne F on 05-18-14
By: Cath Staincliffe
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Shallow Waters
- Hannah Robbins, Book 1
- By: Rebecca Bradley
- Narrated by: Colleen Prendergast
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
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When the naked, battered body of an unidentified teenager is found dumped in an alleyway, postmortem finds evidence of a harrowing series of events. Another teenage death with the same MO pushes DI Hannah Robbins and her team on the Nottingham City division Major Crimes Unit to their limits - and across county borders.
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Competent but Not Inspired
- By Sires on 03-14-16
By: Rebecca Bradley
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Blood for Blood
- Ziba MacKenzie, Book 1
- By: Victoria Selman
- Narrated by: Karen Cass
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Rush hour, London. A packed commuter train is torn apart in a collision. Picking through the carnage, ex-special forces profiler Ziba MacKenzie helps a dying woman who passes on a cryptic message: He did it. You have to tell someone. When a corpse is found bearing the gruesome signature of a serial killer dormant for twenty-five years, Ziba is pulled into the hunt for the perpetrator. As the body count rises it becomes clear he’s on a new spree. But what’s brought the London Lacerator back after such a long hiatus?
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Great New Series—Ziba Is Good Female Lead
- By Linda on 04-16-19
By: Victoria Selman
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All the Pretty Girls
- Taylor Jackson, Book 1
- By: J. T. Ellison
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
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When a local girl falls prey to a sadistic serial killer, Nashville homicide lieutenant Taylor Jackson and her lover, FBI profiler Dr. John Baldwin, find themselves in a joint investigation pursuing a vicious murderer. The Southern Strangler is slaughtering his way through the Southeast, leaving a gruesome memento at each crime scene – the prior victim’s severed hand.
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Distracting subplot and uninteresting characters
- By Ed on 05-13-10
By: J. T. Ellison
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Blind Goddess
- A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel, Book 1
- By: Tom Geddes - translator, Anne Holt
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 11 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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A small-time drug dealer is found battered to death on the outskirts of the Norwegian capital, Oslo. A young Dutchman, walking aimlessly in central Oslo covered in blood, is taken into custody but refuses to talk. When he is informed that the woman who discovered the body, Karen Borg, is a lawyer, he demands her as his defender, although her specialty is civil, not criminal, law. The young man is adamant: he will speak to Karen Borg, and to her alone.
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Not Sure Why I Didn't Like It
- By Tracey Rains on 05-28-13
By: Tom Geddes - translator, and others
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What listeners say about The Mermaids Singing
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Nancy J
- 04-08-13
The First of a Superior Series
I purchased The Mermaids Singing partially because of the reviews I read on Audible, but probably more because Val McDermid seemed to be the favorite mystery author of Mikael Blomqvist in The Millenium Trilogy (The Girl With .....). Now that I have read all of the Tony Hill/Carol Jordan books to date (a new one is due later this year), I felt it was time to write a review of the first book.
McDermid writes wonderful prose that makes her characters come alive -- all of them, not just the two major characters. I won't try to tell you about the plot, since many other reviews do that. But the development of the plot, along with the minutiae of each character's life and personality, make for excellent reading. McDermid creates a tight, incredibly tense story that keeps you reading, sometimes even when you don't want to.
If you are averse to graphic depictions of violence and perversion, you may want to skip this series. But if that's not a problem, I highly recommend these books. In Tony Hill, McDermid has created a flawed and damaged character who still manages to live in the world and work for the forces of good as a Profiler, expert at his work because of his scarred past. The relationship of Tony and Carol Jordan, police inspector, is so tentative and slow moving that you sometimes could scream, but you keep waiting for it to progress. The pair pursues serial killers in plots that will keep you on the edge of your seat with your jaw clenched.
It is important that you read the Tony Hill/Carol Jordan books in the order in which they were published, since these are not stand alone novels. The characters and their relationships and pasts are developed over the course of the series, and reading out of order makes it more difficult to follow some developments.
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60 people found this helpful
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- cristina
- 05-05-13
I made it through four hours
I do not consider myself squeamish. I absolutely loved "Gone Girl" and all of that author's books. I am watching "The Following" on TV (where at least one person dies a horrific and very graphic death in every show). Still, there was something very disturbing about this novel. When it got to a blow-by-blow (so to speak) description of a sex phone call (definitely you would not think that would/could have been as 'violent' as some things I've read, watched or listened to), I realized my entire body was cringing. I read for entertainment -- and I was not being entertained. I was being tortured. It almost felt as if the author was enjoying it as much as the 'bad' characters in the book. Too realistic? (Too sadistic?) Maybe. "Well" written, but not for me. Definitely not entertaining.
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25 people found this helpful
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- Barbara
- 12-23-12
Not for the squeamish
Would you listen to The Mermaids Singing again? Why?
My brother-in-law recommended Val McDermid to me, so I downloaded this, the first in the Hill-Jordan series. I almost stopped reading it because of the graphic descriptions of gruesome and sadistic tortures. I did finish the book, though, and even bought another, in the hope that maybe the author would realize that she didn't need to make her murders so graphic in order to write a gripping thriller. Overall, I enjoyed the book, and am looking forward to seeing whether the author gets better.
What about Graham Roberts’s performance did you like?
Very skillful performance -- almost too much so. Hopefully without giving too much away,...the performance made it easy to guess at the identity of the villain.
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24 people found this helpful
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- Mark
- 11-16-13
Almost as good as that other serial killer series
Any additional comments?
A serial killer is using medieval torture devices to kill men, and a psychological profile named Tony Hill gets brought in even though the cops don't think the cases are related. I thought I knew where this was going and kind of wrote it off as a predictable serial killer book, but the ending was magnificent. Contains some good gender discussions. The first in an ongoing series. I've now read three in the series and each one makes me appreciate the others more.
The narrator did an excellent job, especially consider how the killer's identity needed to be disguised despite conveying much of the action.
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- Lynch
- 06-30-13
Great Book!
I was an avid viewer of Wire In the Blood which was the BBC television series based on these books but I had no idea at the time that there was a written series. This book was awesome! A bit violent but what a story, dark, devious, lots of sexual tension and as far as police procedurals go - top notch. I can't wait to read the next book in the series!
Graham Roberts does a great job of narrating. He brought all of the characters to life and you can tell which one is speaking just from his voice. I can't believe I missed this series from the start.
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- David
- 10-05-13
Formula, few surprises, heavy on romantic angst
Val McDermid handles the language really well, a saving grace in what is otherwise a formulaic, somewhat tiresome story. To be fair, the serial killer genre has been so done to death that it takes almost spectacular inventiveness to give it a fresh face. But that is what we want, isn't it? In this case, if you make a list of the usual elements in the serial killer yarn, you will be able to check them off one by one as you go along without missing a turn or a beat. Even the big twist at the climactic moment is ho-hum-obvious and the denouement is downright banal.
If there is an aspect of this book which is above average as presented in audible form, it is the persona of the killer and the chilling, makes-your-skin-crawl manner in which Graham Roberts brings it to life vocally. It is, after all, only when we are presented with an evil we cannot tolerate that we can really appreciate the struggle necessary to excise it. If only the protagonist pair were equally fascinating, the book would have risen above its prosaic formula, but instead they skirt perilously close to romance novel material, unconvincing and sometimes nearly silly. The author tries to lift the story out of its pedestrian path in a five minute coda at the end, but it is so blatantly an authorial device that it falls flat.
This is the first book in a series. Perhaps it improves, but I was left too disappointed by this one to continue to the next.
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- Ted
- 04-18-14
Creepy
Traffic slows at accidents. Slime fascinates children. Freak shows make money. Which is how, 'Mermaids Singing' seized my attention. Creepy… Tony Hill, like many of today's successful fictional detectives is disturbed… Both by terrors around him, and his own internal-disgustions. Hill trods through and morphsinto the aberrant part of the field: "Aberrant Psychology." It makes him an aberrant psychologist by profession and personality. Creepy.
The dialogues McDermid writes, and which Graham Roberts reads, are slimy. Frequently I wanted to turn them off. Creepy. But I slowed rather than sped away from the disturbing deviant muck. Creepy.
I'm a little embarrassed that I listened to the end of "Mermaids Singing." Creepy… My excuse is the exceptional writing, not, I hope, with a primal magnetic attraction to… to… things so slimy-dark and … creepy.
BTW, Graham Roberts struggles in this book with the nature of the voices that Val McDermid demands as well as the parts required. Perhaps another actor wouldn't? Or perhaps no one actor can really stretch quite as far as McDermid demands. I'll be interested to read how other reviewers describe their reactions.
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- Debbie
- 11-17-13
This is not for me.
What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?
Torturing humans is bad, but when it came to dogs...even barking dogs...I couldn't listen any further.
Would you ever listen to anything by Val McDermid again?
No
Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Graham Roberts?
Yes
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- Katherine
- 07-06-13
A dark and ripping yarn!
Another outstanding mystery from McDermid. A perverse serial killer is on the loose, and the attacks seem to center on Bradfield's gay community. The two main characters, Carol Jordan and Tony Hill, are dedicated and likeable and reassuringly flawed (even if Tony's problem seems somewhat overblown: a major issue resulting from what was a minor critique). They move ever so slowly into mutual trust and honesty with authentic caution.
The author's conceit of introducing the victims to us inspires our sympathy and keeps us cheering on the investigators. While the detail can be quite gruesome, especially when you've become fond of the victim, it isn't gratuitous, and the author does turn our eyes away before it becomes unbearable.
As grizzly as the book can be, the narrator is steady and impassive. He reads with the reassurance of one who knows everything will turn out fine in the end. I'm off to unearth more of McDermid's older mysteries, and search out what Graham Roberts is reading as well.
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- Phil
- 05-11-12
Nice to be able to go back to the begining
What made the experience of listening to The Mermaids Singing the most enjoyable?
You just get caught up in the twists and turns of the plot and the characters
Which character – as performed by Graham Roberts – was your favorite?
Tony
Any additional comments?
I read the book many years ago and now I get to liten to itwhen driving on a long comute. It has not lost the ability to draw me in and it was nice to be able to listen to the start of the series again.
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