Val McDermid

The dead talk. To the right listener, they tell us all about themselves: where they came from, how they lived, how they died - and who killed them. Forensic scientists can use a corpse, the scene of a crime or a single hair to unlock the secrets of the past and allow justice to be done. Bestselling crime author Val McDermid will draw on interviews with top-level professionals to delve, in her own inimitable style, into the questions and mysteries that surround this fascinating science. How is evidence collected from a brutal crime scene? What happens at an autopsy? What techniques, from blood spatter and DNA analysis to entomology, do such experts use? How far can we trust forensic evidence? Looking at famous murder cases, as well as investigations into the living - sexual assaults, missing persons, mistaken identity - she will lay bare the secrets of forensics from the courts of seventeenth-century Europe through Jack the Ripper to the cutting-edge science of the modern day.

Val McDermid stunned readers and critics alike with the publication of her brilliant thriller, A PLACE OF EXECUTION, which was a finalist for the prestigious Edgar Award. Now, in THE MERMAIDS SINGING, she continues her trademark ingenuity for suspense, and introduces criminal profiler Tony Hill, who has spent years exploring the psyches of madmen. But now he's become one of the hunted... YOU ALWAYS REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME... This was the summer he discovered what he wanted—at a gruesome museum of criminology far off the beaten track of more timid tourists. Visions of torture inspired his fantasies like a muse. It would prove so terribly fulfilling. BUT THE NEXT TIME WOULD BE BETTER... 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. AND PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT. 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...

Shakespeare created the myth of the Macbeths as indefensible murderous conspirators. But now internationally bestselling author Val McDermid drags the truth out of the shadows, exposing the patriarchal prejudices of history Britain’s reigning “Queen of Crime” (The Scotsman), Val McDermid has ensnared audiences worldwide for over thirty years with her thrilling and masterfully plotted crime oeuvre. A radical, rip-roaring counternarrative drawing on the historical record, Queen Macbeth delivers an illuminating portrait of Shakespeare’s most famous villain, and the treacherous pursuit of ambition that made her legendary. A thousand years ago in an ancient Scottish landscape, a woman is on the run with her three companions – a healer, a weaver, and a seer. The men hunting her will kill her – because she is the only one who stands between them and their violent ambition. She is no lady: she is the first queen of Scotland, married to a king called Macbeth. As the net closes in, what unfurls is a tale of passion, forced marriage, bloody massacre, and the harsh realities of medieval Scotland. At the heart of it is one strong, charismatic woman, who survived loss and jeopardy to outwit the endless plotting of a string of ruthless and power-hungry men. Her struggle won her a country. But now it could cost her life. Immersive and utterly riveting, Queen Macbeth is an electric reimagining of one of Shakespeare’s most celebrated tragedies and reaffirms McDermid as one of the preeminent writers of our day.

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 twenty-two 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.

Hailed as Britain's Queen of Crime, Val McDermid's award-winning, internationally bestselling novels have captivated readers for more than thirty years. Now, in 1979, she returns to the past with the story of Allie Burns, an investigative journalist whose stories lead her into world a corruption, terror, and murder. She's on the hunt for a killer story . . . 1979. It's the winter of discontent, and Allie Burns is chasing her first big scoop. One of few women in the newsroom, she needs something explosive for the boys' club to take her seriously. Soon Allie and fellow reporter Danny Sullivan are making powerful enemies with their investigations - and Allie won't stop there. When she discovers a terrorist threat close to home, she devises a dangerous plan to make her name. But Allie is a woman in a man's world . . . and putting a foot wrong could be fatal. The first novel in McDermid's newest series, 1979 is an atmospheric journey into the past with intriguing insight into the present, and the latest addition to McDermid's crime pantheon.