How the Dead Speak

Beware, you best-selling author who would dare to break the mould!

Val McDermid has written 11 Carol Jordan/Tony Hill crime stories. I’ve read them all, and enjoyed them all. The killers being tracked down are genuinely, hauntingly, disturbing and Jordan and Hill have believably human strengths and failings. They make a fascinating team and their investigations are compulsively readable.

But this eleventh book in the series shakes all that up. Tony Hill is in prison, Carol Jordan is investigating privately, and the ReMit team she set up is now in the hands of a macho careerist keen to accept the easiest solution. All of which gives the reader three separate plot strands to follow. Four if you count the two private investigations Carol Jordan undertakes.

And this seems to have driven readers up the wall, if the reviews on Amazon are anything to go by. They hate it. It’s the worst book in the series. By far! I haven’t read them all – I don’t want to read them all – but one common complaint seems to be that Val McDermid hasn’t offered up yet another straightforward murder investigation. In other words, she’s dared to mess with the formula. She hasn’t provided more of the same.

Well, I loved it. You always know where you are in each storyline, and each of them is filled with vivid, interesting characters ready to do something unexpected. The pace never lets up and no one story takes precedence over another; the way she juggles all the separate strands is little short of dazzling. I think it’s a wonderful read and I can’t wait to see where Val McDermid takes everyone in this world next.