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MERMAIDS SINGING, THE
by Val McDermid
Harper, November 1997
400 pages
$6.99
ISBN: 0312983603


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Tony Hill is a psychological profiler who's got the unenviable job of trying to sell the police in the local districts on participating on a task force that will define how profiling will be used to assist in solving cases. It's not an easy sell, as many of the coppers feel that profiling is just so much mumbo-jumbo. However, he has the perfect opportunity to demonstrate its benefits when a series of killings occur in a local precinct. Although the police investigators at the lower levels suspected a serial killer as early as the second death, the bureaucracy has been slow to admit that such a person might be out there.

Hill is paired with a female detective inspector named Carol Jordan. She's very cooperative, and they work together well as a team. There's some chemistry between them, which they both try to ignore. Tony is impotent and entangled in an addictive phone sex relationship that he can't seem to sever and doesn't seem capable of a normal sexual relationship; Carol is cautious after a series of ill-fated affairs.

As they investigate, we are exposed to the mind of the killer who documents his activities on his computer for the future book of his exploits. This is a very twisted, very intelligent individual. As the book opens, we watch him on a tour of Europe, the highlight for him being a tour of a museum of criminology and torture, an exhibition he found to be a monument to the ingenuity of man. He goes through an elaborate process of selecting his victims and finds unique and ghastly ways to torture each of them.

Although the act of torture is an integral part of the plot, it is not until almost midway in to the book that there is a graphic torture scene. From that point on, I proceeded very cautiously. The torture scenes are only in the chapterstold from the point of view of the killer, so the reader can eye those chapters selectively before deciding whether to read them or not. I found that I did not lose anything in hopping over these descriptions as my vivid imagination labeled them as "torture" and didn't require the details.

It's very interesting to see Tony and Carol looking at the evidence and the conclusions that Tony draws as a result. Every detail of the crime is like a whorl in a fingerprint, leaving an indelible impression that could be created by only one individual. Tony comes closer and closer to understanding the killer, to see his motivations and thoughts, his habits and needs. He is able to get inside the twisted mind and figure out what makes him do what he does. Ultimately, the profile that he creates is his salvation.

As the investigation proceeds, we are also exposed to the inner workings of a typical police department. In this case, the man supervising the detective team, John Brandon, is a man of integrity. We see the pain that the professionals go through to catch a horrific killer, the hours they put in, the sacrifices they make. We also see what happens when justice goes bad, when people in the inner sanctum do things such as plant evidence or inform the press about secret details.

In spite of the fact that I had to skip the torture scenes, I thought the book was extremely well written until it reached the end. At that point, there were just a few too many coincidences and an unbelievable act of fortuitous timing that shook the credibility that had been so hard won in the book.

The Mermaids Singing is a complex, multi-layered book that is a hard-boiled police procedural and psychological thriller. It is chilling in its gruesomeness but at the same time mesmerizing, brilliantly written but a bit flawed. I also liked the fact that McDermid reversed a crime fiction formula in that the psychologist was a man and the cop was a woman.

Note: This review is based on the out of print HARDCOVER edition.

Reviewed by Maddy Van Hertbruggen, June 2003

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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