Showing results by author "Val McDermid" in All Categories

On a freezing morning four drunken students stumble upon the body of a woman in the snow. Rosie has been raped, stabbed and left for dead in a cemetery. The only suspects are the four young men now stained with her blood. Twenty-five years later the police mount a cold-case review of Rosie’s unsolved murder, and the four are still suspects. But when two of them die in suspicious circumstances, it seems that someone is pursuing their own brand of justice....

1979. It is the winter of discontent, and reporter Allie Burns is chasing her first big scoop. There are few women in the newsroom, and she needs something explosive for the boys' club to take her seriously. Soon Allie and fellow journalist Danny Sullivan are exposing the criminal underbelly of respectable Scotland. They risk making powerful enemies - and Allie won't stop there.

As a favour, Kate agrees to track down a missing songwriter, Moria Pollock. It was supposed to be a nice simple case, but the search soon leads Kate into the dark underworld of Leeds, Manchester and Bradford – and finally to a shocking confrontation with a killer.

Up until now, the only serial killers Tony Hill had encountered were safely behind bars. This one’s different – this one’s on the loose. Four men have been found mutilated and tortured. As fear grips the city, the police turn to clinical psychologist Tony Hill for a profile of the killer. But soon Tony becomes the unsuspecting target in a battle of wits and wills where he has to use every ounce of his professional nerve to survive.

Freelance journalist Lindsay Gordon is strapped for cash. Why else would she agree to cover a fund-raising gala at a girls' public school? But when the star attraction is found garrotted with her own cello string minutes before she is due on stage, Lindsay finds herself investigating a vicious murder. Who would have wanted Lorna Smith Cooper dead? Who had the key to the locked room in which her body was found? And who could have slipped out of the hall at just the right time to commit this calculated and cold-blooded crime?

A brand-new collection of short stories featuring the Queen of Crime’s legendary detective Jane Marple, penned by 12 remarkable best-selling and acclaimed authors. This collection of 12 original short stories, all featuring Jane Marple, will introduce the character to a whole new generation. Each author reimagines Agatha Christie’s Marple through their own unique perspective while staying true to the hallmarks of a traditional mystery.

When a skeleton is discovered hidden at the top of a gothic Victorian building in Edinburgh, which is scheduled for renovation, Cold Case Squad detective Karen Pirie is given the task of identifying the decades-old bones. Her investigation leads her back to past conflicts, false identities and buried secrets...

From an irresponsible baron whose body is discovered beneath a silver birch tree, to a classic detective duo solving a historic case as the lights go out across Europe, and an exclusive Tony Hill and Carol Jordan story, the characters McDermid conjures are enigmatic and dangerous. These evocative, atmospheric tales will shock and delight.

It's 1984. The miners' strike is dividing the country. In a struggling coal-mining town, the miners and their families are living at the edge of their resources. On the 14th of December, five miners break ranks to travel to Nottingham and work. For those who stay behind, this is an unforgivable betrayal. Twenty-three years later, a young woman is asking the police to trace her missing father. Miner Mick Prentice vanished, never to be seen again.

Professor Fiona Cameron is a psychologist who uses computer technology to track serial offenders. She vowed never to work for the Met again after they went against her advice and screwed up an investigation as a result. But when her lover, thriller writer Kit Martin, tells her a fellow crime novelist has been murdered, Fiona can’t help taking an interest. With the killer striking again, Fiona is caught in a race against time.

Award-winning 'Queen of Crime' Val McDermid has sold over 17 million books worldwide, and been translated into over 40 languages. Her Wire in the Blood series was adapted for TV, starring Robson Green and Hermione Norris, and ran for six seasons. Included here are full-cast adaptations of several of her acclaimed novels, as well as four tales specially written for BBC Radio.

When Robbie Bishop, star midfielder for the Bradfield Vics, is poisoned by a rare and deadly toxin, profiler Dr Tony Hill and trusted colleague DCI Carol Jordan have their work cut out for them. Then a bomb explodes in the football stadium, causing massive casualties - and another man dies from poisoning. Is there a link between the cases? What are the motives for these crimes? The clock is ticking, and the death toll keeps rising....

When torrential summer rains uncover a bizarrely tattooed body on a Lake District hillside, old wives' tales also come swirling to the surface. For centuries Lakelanders have whispered that Fletcher Christian staged the massacre on Pitcairn so that he could return home. And there he told his story to an old friend and schoolmate, William Wordsworth, who turned it into a long narrative poem.

On a freezing winter morning, fishermen pull a body from the sea. It is quickly discovered that the dead man was the prime suspect in a decade-old investigation, when a prominent civil servant disappeared without trace. DCI Karen Pirie was the last detective to review the file and is drawn into a sinister world of betrayal and dark secrets. But Karen is already grappling with another case, one with even more questions and fewer answers. A skeleton has been discovered in an abandoned camper van and all clues point to a killer who never faced justice - a killer who is still out there.

In the Peak District village of Scarsdale, 13-year-old girls didn’t just run away. So when Alison Carter vanished in the winter of '63, everyone knew it was a murder. Catherine Heathcote remembers the case well - a child herself when Alison vanished. Now a journalist, she persuades DI George Bennett to speak of the hunt for Alison. But when a fresh lead emerges, Bennett tries to stop the story - plunging Catherine into a world of buried secrets and revelations.

Young girls are disappearing around the country, and there is nothing to connect them to one another. Dr Tony Hill sets his team an exercise: they are given the details and asked to discover links between the cases. Only one officer comes up with a theory that is ridiculed...until one of their own is murdered. For Tony Hill the murder becomes a matter for personal revenge, and, joined by colleague Carol Jordan, he embarks on a game where hunter and hunted can all too easily be reversed.

Edinburgh, haunted by the ghosts of its many writers, is also the cold case beat of DCI Karen Pirie. So she shouldn't be surprised when an author's manuscript appears to be a blueprint for an actual crime. Karen can't ignore the plot's chilling similarities to the unsolved case of an Edinburgh University student who vanished from her own doorstep. The manuscript seems to be the key to unlocking what happened to Lara Hardie, but there's a problem: the author died before he finished it.

A quiet night on a country road. The stillness shattered by a car engulfed in flames, and a burned body discovered in the driver's seat. As the investigation unfolds, DCI Carol Jordan and psychological profiler. Tony Hill quickly realise that this is more than just a tragic accident. And so begins the hunt for a truly terrifying killer, someone who believes he is invisible, untraceable and untouchable.

It's 1989, and Allie Burns is back. Older and maybe wiser, she's running the northern news operation of the Sunday Globe, chafing at losing her role in investigative journalism and at the descent into the gutter of the UK tabloid media. But there's plenty to keep her occupied. The year begins with the memorial service to the victims of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, but Allie has barely filed her copy when she stumbles over a story about HIV/AIDS that will shock her into a major change of direction.

When psychological profiler Tony Hill comes across a series of suicides among women tormented by vicious online predators, he begins to wonder if there is more to these tragedies than meets the eye. Could it be murder? But what kind of serial killer wants his crimes to stay hidden? Tony and DCI Carol Jordan begin the hunt for the most dangerous and terrifying kind of killer - someone who has nothing to fear and nothing to lose.