Internationally best-selling crime writer Val McDermid is one of the most dependable professionals in the mystery and thriller business, whose acutely suspenseful, seamlessly plotted novels have riveted millions of readers worldwide. In her latest, "The Skeleton Road," she delivers a gripping standalone novel about a cold case that links back to the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. 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. And when it turns out the bones may be from as far away as former Yugoslavia, Karen will need to dig deeper than she ever imagined into the tragic history of the Balkans: to war crimes and their consequences, and ultimately to the notion of what justice is and who serves it. "The Skeleton Road" is an edge-of-your-seat, unforgettable read from one of our finest crime writers."Val McDermid . . . has the ruthless psychological scalpel that forms part of the equipment of all good novelists, whatever their genre. And, fortunately for us, she knows just how to use it."--The Guardian (UK) on "The Retribution" 

A superb collection of nineteen nail-biting, perfectly plotted short stories from internationally bestselling crime writer Val McDermid, the queen of the psychological thriller.

ReviewIt's perhaps fitting that for McDermid's 25th novel she's revisited her most thrillingly murderous creation, Jacko Vance (Daily Mirror )Val McDermid's 25th novel is stunningly good, but it comes with a health warning. It is truly disturbing (The Times )McDermid never pulls her punches in her graphic descriptions of the evils men (and women) inflict on each other...tension filled from start to finish (Irish Independent )Her writing is taut, her plotting pacy... McDermid is particularly good at analysing human damage and its effects (Scotsman )To write one brilliant book is hard. To write 25 is a miracle. That is what Val McDermid has achieved over the course of her career and it's why she is a much-loved legend in the literary world...the pace here is flawless and the various storylines are expertly interwoven...a superb crime novel (Sunday Express )Brilliant ... sensational ...unforgettable (Guardian )It's a tribute to McDermid's skill as a storyteller that she deliberately creates a trio of central characters who are essentially incapable of conventional empathy yet still manages to sustain reader sympathy right through to the coldly brutal finale (Irish Times ) Book DescriptionThe unforgettable, gripping new Tony Hill and Carol Jordan novel

Stunning psychological thriller featuring Tony Hill, hero of The Wire in the Blood, from one of Britain's bestselling novelistsFor some, there is nothing so sweet, so thrilling, as the torment of others ...A dead girl lies on a blood-soaked mattress, her limbs spread in a parody of ecstasy. The scene matches a series of murders which ended when irrefutable forensic evidence secured the conviction of one Derek Tyler. But Tyler's been locked up in a mental institution for two years, barely speaking a word – except to say that 'the Voice' told him to do it. Top criminal psychologist Dr Tony Hill is prepared to think the unthinkable – this is not a copycat murder but something much stranger. While DCI Carol Jordan and her team mount a desperate and dangerous undercover police operation to trap the murderer, Hill heads towards a terrifying face-off with one of the most perverse killers he has ever encountered...

New mystery from the internationally acclaimed Val McDermid.

Terrifying psychological chiller featuring clinical psychologist Tony Hill of The Mermaids Singing and The Wire in the Blood. A twisted killer targeting psychologists has left a grisly trail across Europe. Dr Tony Hill, expert at mapping the minds of murderers, is reluctant to get involved. But then the next victim is much closer to home...Meanwhile, his former partner, DCI Carol Jordan, is working undercover in Berlin, on a dangerous operation to trap a millionaire traffiker. When the game turns nasty, Tony is the only person she can call on for help. Confronting a cruelty that has its roots in Nazi atrocities, Tony and Carol are thrown together in a world of violence and corruption, where they have no one to trust but each other.

There was only one reason Manchester-based private eye Kate Brannigan was prepared to let her boyfriend help out with the investigation into a car sales fraud — nothing bad could happen. But by now Kate should know that with Richard you have to expect the unexpected. With the unexpected being Richard behind bars, Kate seems to be the obvious choice to look after his eight-year-old son — who proves even more troublesome than his father. Kate finds herself dragged into a world of drug traffickers, child pornographers, fraudsters and violent gangland enforcers… bringing her face to face with death in the most terrifying investigation of her career.

'You should have been a detective. If there's one thing the last year has proved, it's how good you are at finding things out. Not simple things. Hard things. Things that nobody is supposed to be able to find out. Things that are buried so deep nobody even thinks twice about them. The sort of things that turn people's lives inside out once they're exposed.' Meet Tony Hill's most twisted adversary - a killer with a shopping list of victims, a killer unmoved by youth and innocence, a killer driven by the most perverted of desires. The murder and mutilation of teenager Jennifer Maidment is horrific enough on its own. But it's not long before Tony realises it's just the start of a brutal and ruthless campaign that's targeting an apparently unconnected group of young people. Struggling with the newly-awakened ghosts of his own past and desperate for distraction in his work, Tony battles to find the answers that will give him personal and professional satisfaction in his most testing investigation yet.

Tony Hill, criminal profiler and hero of TV's Wire in the Blood, is back in a terrifying psychological thriller from bestselling author Val McDermid. A city is mourning. Bradfield Victoria's star midfielder has been murdered, bizarrely poisoned in an apparently motiveless killing. Then a bomb blast rips through the football stadium. Dozens lie dead, many more injured. Is it a terrorist attack or a vendetta against the Vics? Or something even more sinister? As he lies in a hospital bed, psychologist and profiler Dr Tony Hill struggles to make sense of the fragments of information he manages to gather. But his customary ally, DCI Carol Jordan, is being pushed to the margins of the investigation by intelligence services determined to prove themselves indispensable. It wouldn't be so bad if Tony and Carol could agree about who they're looking for. But even their relationship has its dislocations and dark places. Beneath the Bleeding sets Tony and Carol at odds as they have never been before, forcing them to ask questions of themselves they would never have imagined possible.

3rd Lindsay Gordon Mystery.