Showing results by author "Val McDermid"

The dead talk - to the right listener. They can tell us all about themselves: where they came from, how they lived, how they died, and, of course, who killed them. Forensic scientists can unlock the mysteries of the past and help serve justice using the messages left by a corpse, a crime scene, or the faintest of human traces.

In Broken Ground, cold-case Detective Karen Pirie faces her hardest challenge yet. Six feet under in a Highland peat bog lies Alice Somerville’s inheritance, buried by her grandfather at the end of World War II. But when Alice finally uncovers it, she finds an unwanted surprise - a body with a bullet hole between the eyes. Meanwhile, DCI Pirie is called in to unravel a case where nothing is quite as it seems. And as she gets closer to the truth, it becomes clear that not everyone shares her desire for justice. Or even the idea of what justice is.

Karen Pirie is the newly appointed Deputy Inspector of the Cold Case Unit, and her first investigation takes her 25 years into the past to the national miners’ strike. At the time, a kidnapping gone wrong left a small boy missing, but new evidence suggests he might still be alive. As Pirie delves deeper, she realizes the boy’s disapperance may be linked to another cold case involving a missing miner.

When a teenage joyrider crashes a stolen car and ends up in a coma, a routine DNA test reveals a connection to an unsolved murder from 22 years before. Finding the answer to the cold case should be straightforward. But it's as twisted as the DNA helix itself. Meanwhile, Karen finds herself irresistibly drawn to another mystery that she has no business investigating - a mystery that has its roots in a terrorist bombing two decades ago. And again, she finds that nothing is as it seems.

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.

Four in the morning, mid-December, snow blankets St. Andrews School. Student Alex Gilbery and his three best friends are staggering home from a party when they stumble upon the body of a young woman.

In this incredible follow-up to the New York Times and USA Today best seller FaceOff, 22 of the world's most popular thriller writers come together for an unforgettable anthology. MatchUp takes the never-before-seen best seller pairings of FaceOff and adds a delicious new twist: gender. Eleven of the world's best female thriller writers, from Diana Gabaldon to Charlaine Harris, are paired with 11 of the world's best male thriller writers.

Is it violence if it's virtual? The outspoken women targeted by the increasingly cruel Internet trolls and bullies would probably say so. For some of them, the torrents of bile and vicious threats prove too much. They begin to silence themselves in a series of high-profile suicides. Or do they? Tony Hill isn't convinced. But he's the only one.

In the north of England, single women are beginning to disappear from weddings. A pattern soon becomes clear: Someone is crashing the festivities and luring the women away - only to leave the victims' bodies in their own burned-out cars in remote locations. Tony and Carol are called upon to investigate - but this may be the toughest case they've ever had to face. Meanwhile, Detective Sergeant Paula McIntyre and her partner Elinor must deal with a cruel cyber-blackmailer targeting their teenage ward, Torin.

World-class crime writer Val McDermid has sold millions of copies of her books worldwide. In The Retribution, clinical psychologist Tony Hill and detective Carol Jordan face a terrifying reality: Serial killer Jacko Vance has escaped imprisonment - and appears hell-bent on revenge against those who put him behind bars.

A Greek tragedy in modern England, A Place of Execution is a taut psychological thriller that explores, exposes and explodes the border between reality and illusion in a multi-layered narrative that turns expectations on their head and reminds us that what we know is what we do not know.

In the center of historic Edinburgh, builders are preparing to convert a disused Victorian Gothic building into luxury flats. They are understandably surprised to find skeletal remains hidden in a high pinnacle that hasn't been touched by maintenance for years. But who do the bones belong to, and how did they get there? Could the eccentric British pastime of free climbing the outside of buildings play a role? Enter cold case detective Karen Pirie, who gets to work trying to establish the corpse's identity.

Internationally best-selling crime writer Val McDermid' s work speaks for itself: her books have sold millions of copies worldwide, won numerous accolades, and attracted a devoted following of readers around the globe.

Across the country, dozens of teenage girls have vanished. 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 fathom what he's about to do next.

When a body is discovered in the remote depths of the Highlands, DCI Karen Pirie finds herself in the right place at the right time. Unearthed with someone's long-buried inheritance, the victim seems to belong to the distant past - until new evidence suggests otherwise, and Karen is called in to unravel a case where nothing is as it seems. It's not long before an overheard conversation draws Karen into the heart of a different case, however - a shocking crime she thought she'd already prevented. As she inches closer to the twisted truths at the centre of these murders, it becomes clear that she's dealing with a version of justice terrifyingly different to her own....

Winner of the Gold Dagger Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Val McDermid pens mysteries heralded on both sides of the Atlantic. In Beneath the Bleeding, Dr. Tony Hill must make sense of the perplexing death of a soccer star—but the footballer’s demise is only a prelude to greater violence.

Lindsay Gordon, self-proclaimed cynical socialist lesbian feminist journalist, is less than overjoyed at the prospect of spending a weekend at a posh girls' boarding school. Tensions are running high over the school's financial problems; the fact that school alumna and renowned musician Lorna Smith-Couper will return to the school to perform at a benefit concert only exacerbates anxieties. When Smith-Couper is found strangled with her own cello string right before the concert, Lindsay and Cordelia find their new relationship tested in unique ways as they seek to find the murderer among a long list of suspects.

In a small, grim room, the body of a woman is discovered, panic and pain etched in her face. The scene matches in every detail a series of murders two years ago, murders that ended when irrefutable forensic evidence secured the conviction of a deeply disturbed young man named Derek Tyler.

Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger Award-winning author Val McDermid pens thrilling mysteries eagerly devoured by fans. In the sixth novel in her Tony Hill series—the inspiration for the hit British television show Wire in the Blood—psychologist Tony Hill and Detective Carol Jordan’s investigation of a teenage girl’s murder leads them to an Internet predator.

It's 1984. The miners' strike is dividing the country. In a struggling coal-mining town, the miners and their families are living at the edge of their resources. On the 14th of December, five miners break ranks to travel to Nottingham and work. For those who stay behind, this is an unforgivable betrayal. Twenty-three years later, a young woman is asking the police to trace her missing father. Miner Mick Prentice vanished, never to be seen again.