Showing results by author "Val McDermid" in All Categories

The fourth in the series featuring investigative journalist Lindsay Gordon. Leaving her new home in California for a trade union conference in Sheffield, Lindsay Gordon finds herself in the company of old friends - and enemies, including Tom Jack. When this unethical union leader is found dead, having catapulted out of Lindsay’s tenth-floor hotel room, she is taken in for questioning by the police.

Why would anyone want to kill Penny Varnavides, best-selling author of the Teen Dreams series? Her demise can't be the freak accident it first appeared - it's an exact replica of the murder method in her forthcoming book. Only three people knew the plot of Penny's unpublished novel: her literary agent, her editor and her ex-girlfriend, Meredith. In an effort to clear Meredith, Lindsay Gordon delves beneath the glittering facade of the seemingly glamorous world of London publishing in search of a murderer.

A thousand years ago in an ancient Scottish landscape, a woman is on the run with her three bosom companions–a healer, a weaver and a seer. If the men hunting her find them, they will kill her because she is the only one who stands between them and their violent ambition. She is no lady: she is the first queen of Scotland, married to a king called Macbeth. Shakespeare fed us the myth of the Macbeths as power-hungry murderous conspirators. But now Val McDermid drags the truth out of the shadows, exposing the patriarchal prejudices of history.

There is one serial killer who has shaped and defined police profiler Tony Hill's life. One serial killer whose evil surpasses all others. One serial killer who has the power to chill him to the bone: Jacko Vance. And now Jacko is back in Tony's life. Even more twisted and cunning than ever before, he is focused on wreaking revenge on Tony - and DCI Carol Jordan - for the years he has spent in prison. Tony doesn't know when Jacko will strike, or where.

Meet Tony Hill's most twisted adversary - a killer with a shopping list of victims, 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. Tony battles to find the answers that will give him personal and professional satisfaction in his most testing investigation yet.

Guilt and grief have driven a wedge between long time crime-fighting partners psychologist Tony Hill and ex-DCI Carol Jordan. But just because they're not talking doesn't mean the killing stops. Someone is killing women. Women who bear a disturbing resemblance to Carol Jordan. And when the evidence begins to point in a disturbing direction, thinking the unthinkable seems the only possible answer.

A protest group hits the headlines when unrest at a women's peace camp explodes into murder. Already on the scene, journalist Lindsay Gordon desperately tries to strike a balance between personal and professional responsibilities. As she peels back the layers of deception surrounding the protest and its opponents, she finds that no one - ratepayer or reporter, policeman or peace woman - seems wholly above suspicion. Then Lindsay uncovers a truth that even she can scarcely believe....

It’s April 2020 and Edinburgh is in lockdown, but that doesn’t mean crime takes a holiday. It would seem like a strange time for a cold case to go hot—the streets all but empty, an hour’s outdoor exercise the maximum allowed—but when a source at the National Library contacts DCI Karen Pirie’s team about documents in the archive of a recently deceased crime novelist, it seems it’s game on again. What unspools is a twisted game of betrayal and revenge, but no one quite expects how many twists it will turn out to have.

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.

It's the summer solstice weekend, and 150,000 people have descended on a farm in the northeast of England for an open-air music festival. Reporting on the event is journalist Zoe Meadows, who files her copy from a food van run by her friends Sam and Lisa. When some of Sam's customers get sick, it looks like food poisoning, and it's exacerbated by the mud, rain and inadequate sanitary facilities. It's assumed to be a 24-hour thing until people get home and discover strange skin lesions, which ulcerate and turn septic. More people start getting ill - and dying.

Legendary editor, Maxim Jakubowski, delivers another chilling anthology collecting stories of cold-blooded murder, revenge and crimes-gone-wrong from the best of the best in crime fiction. Spine-chilling and gripping, these tales will grip you with their devious narrators and crafty twists.

In My Scotland, number one best-selling author Val McDermid takes readers to the landscapes she has known all her life and the places where her stories and characters reside. This remarkable book uncovers Val's own Scotland in all its glory - from the iconic Isle of Skye to the majestic streets of Edinburgh, from the undiscovered hideaways of the Highlands to the wild and untamed Jura. Featuring excerpts from Val McDermid's best-selling novels and charting Karen Pirie's Fife to Lindsay Gordon's Glasgow, My Scotland is an unforgettable and uniquely personal journey.

Gavin is an excellent writer; he can conjure up believable characters, evoke a credible setting and wrap the reader up in his language, but he can never seem to come up with a credible plot. On meeting Natasha at a creative writing group he thinks he has met his soulmate. Not only is she attractive, her plots are amazing. Combining their skills seems like the obvious route, and their stories become internet sensations. But when tragedy strikes, will the stories survive?

‘Death is a hollow drum whose beat has measured out my adult life.’ So writes Jay Macallan Stewart in her latest volume of memoirs. But nobody has ever asked whether that has been by accident or design. Nobody, that is, until Jay turns her sights on newly-wed and freshly-widowed Magda Newsam. For Magda’s mother Corinna is an Oxford don who knows enough of Jay’s history to be very afraid indeed. Determined to protect her daughter, Corinna turns to clinical psychologist Charlie Flint.

The year started badly and only got worse - blizzards, strikes, power cuts, and political unrest were the norm. For journalist Allie Burns, however, someone else's bad news was the unmistakable sound of opportunity knocking, and the year is ripe with possibilities. But Allie is a woman in a man's world. Desperate to get away from the "women's stories" the Glasgow desk keeps assigning her, she strikes up an alliance with wannabe investigative journalist Danny Sullivan. From the start, their stories create enemies.

The Moonstone, a yellow diamond looted from an Indian temple and believed to bring bad luck to its owner, is bequeathed to Rachel Verinder on her eighteenth birthday. That very night the priceless stone is stolen again and when Sergeant Cuff is brought in to investigate the crime, he soon realizes that no one in Rachel's household is above suspicion.

Natale in Scozia, il periodo dell’anno che esalta la bellezza di questa terra selvaggia, punteggiata di distillerie di whisky e di guglie e castelli che ne fanno il tripudio del gotico. Ma i sussulti di un indipendentismo che ha origini antiche scuotono la struttura portante del Regno Unito, con il rischio di un referendum che rappresenterebbe un pericoloso precedente. Allie Burns, giovane reporter del Clarion, un quotidiano di Glasgow, sta tornando a casa in treno dopo le vacanze quando si imbatte in qualcosa di inaspettato: un parto in una carrozza.

Lindsay Gordon, self-proclaimed cynical socialist lesbian feminist journalist, is less than overjoyed at the prospect of spending a weekend at a posh girls' boarding school. Tensions are running high over the school's financial problems; the fact that school alumna and renowned musician Lorna Smith-Couper will return to the school to perform at a benefit concert only exacerbates anxieties. When Smith-Couper is found strangled with her own cello string right before the concert, Lindsay and Cordelia find their new relationship tested in unique ways as they seek to find the murderer among a long list of suspects.

Der erste Teil der erfolgreichen Thriller-Serie um das Ermittlerduo Carol Jordan und Tony Hill beginnt mit dem Fund von vier männlichen Leichen in Yorkshire. Diese Entdeckung ist selbst für das hartgesottene Team der Mord-Kommission ein Schock: Offenbar wurden die Opfer vor ihrer Ermordung mit mittelalterlichen Folter-Instrumenten gequält und verstümmelt. Obwohl alles nach der Tat eines Serienkillers aussieht, besteht der Superintendent darauf, dass die Morde getrennt voneinander untersucht werden.

Ein Wahnsinniger hat es offensichtlich auf Psychologen abgesehen, die er auf bestialische Weise misshandelt und anschließend nackt und gefesselt ertränkt. Der Killer wurde offenbar selbst in seiner Kindheit vom eigenen Großvater grauenvoll gequält und gedemütigt. Als Tony Hill der schrecklichen Vergangenheit illegaler Nazi-Experimente an Kindern auf die Spur kommt, ist es bereits zu spät. Er schwebt als Psychologe selbst in höchster Lebensgefahr.