Clinical psychologist Dr Tony Hill and Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan face the toughest challenge of their careers when they are confronted with an 'impossible' series of murders. Back in Bradfield after her traumatic experiences in Berlin, Carol is surprised to find Tony has followed her there to take up a post in the local secure mental hospital. When a prostitute is murdered in a particularly grotesque and stomach-churning way, she turns to him for help.
You always remember the first time. Isn't that what they say about sex? How much more true it is of murder... Up till now, the only serial killers Tony Hill had encountered were safely behind bars. This one's different -- this one's on the loose. In the northern town of Bradfield four men have been found mutilated and tortured. Fear grips the city; no man feels safe.
Bodyguarding had never made it to Manchester PI Kate Brannigan's wish list. But somebody's got to pay the bills at Brannigan & Co, and if the only earner on offer is playing nursemaid to a paranoid soap star, the fast-talking computer-loving white-collar crime expert has to swallow her pride and slip into something more glam than her Thai boxing kit.
Freelance journalist Lindsay Gordon is strapped for cash - otherwise she would never have agreed to cover a fundraising gala at Derbyshire House Girls' School. But when the star attraction is found garrotted with her own cello string, Lindsay finds herself investigating a vicious murder. Who had the key to the locked room in which the body was found? And who could have slipped out of the half at just the right time to commit this calculated and cold-blooding crime?
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.
