THE MERMAIDS SINGING by Val McDermid

Finished Th 8/23/12

Post on Good Reads-

This is the first in Val McDermid's series featuring criminal profiler, Tony Hill, and Bradfield police detective, Carol Jordon. The novel is set in the early 1990's in a fictional northern England city, and it occurs just when the concept of criminal profiling had gained popularity in the United States. Tony Hill is trying to set up a national criminal profile database in England as a serial killer begins targeting young men in the gay subculture in the city of Bradfield, England. And, this is not 'gay bashing' since the victims seem to have been subjected to very gruesome and elaborate forms of medieval torture.

What makes the novel interesting is that the lead character, Tony Hill, is a celebrated criminal psychologist, yet he suffers from fairly serious psycho-sexual problems. A minor flaw in the novel might be that Carol Jordan's problems in dealing with an endemic sexist hierarchy has been explored in nearly every detective novel with a female lead. But, this is the first in a series, and I would not let this prevent me from reading another.

The killer's journal documenting his torture devices was very interesting, and his emotional state during the murders was very compelling. The ending of the book revealed an unexpected killer, and managed to blend Hill's sexual problems with the solution to the case, and also leaves the door open for a growing relationship between the two main characters. I would definitely check out another of the Hill/Jordan series by McDermid.


My notes-

The killer is Christopher Thorpe, but he is a transsexual and now using the name Angelica. This is the woman who Tony Hill has been using as a 'phone sex' partner. He was researching the Phone Sex Sub-Culture, but this woman seemed to be making his problem of impotence a thing of the past, and right before he was kidnapped, he was entertaining thoughts of actually meeting Angelica.

Carol Jordan lives with her brother Michael who is a computer expert, and she has a cat named Nelson.

The title to the novel is from the poem by T.S. Elliot, LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK
"I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each, I do not think that they will sing to me".

Each chapter begins with a few lines from "On Murder considered as one of the fine arts" by Thomas De Quincey (1827).