Val McDermid

The dead can tell us all about themselves: where they came from, how they lived, how they died, and, of course, who killed them. Forensic scientists can unlock the mysteries of the past and help serve justice using the messages left by a corpse, a crime scene, or the faintest of human traces. This book draws on crime novelist McDermid's own interviews and firsthand experience on scene with top forensic scientists. Along the way, McDermid discovers...

Number one bestseller, Val McDermid returns with her pulse-pounding, suspenseful new novel featuring two of the most distinctive and iconic characters in crime fiction: Tony Hill and Carol Jordan. When charred human remains are discovered in the driver's seat of a burning car, DCI Carol Jordan and psychological profiler Tony Hill are brought in to investigate. They soon discover that what appeared to be a terrible accident is, in fact, murder. Delving...

"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,...

It's four in the morning, mid-December, and snow blankets St. Andrews School. Student Alex Gilbey and his three best friends are staggering home from a party when they stumble upon the body of a young woman. Rosie Duff has been raped, stabbed, and left for dead in the ancient Pictish cemetery. And the only suspects are four young students stained with her blood.

When a body is discovered in the remote depths of the Highlands, DCI Karen Pirie finds herself in the right place at the right time. Unearthed with someone's long-buried inheritance, the victim seems to belong to the distant past - until new evidence suggests otherwise, and Karen is called in to unravel a case where nothing is as it seems. It's not long before an overheard conversation draws Karen into the heart of a different case, however - a shocking...

"It's only January, and the year has already brought blizzards, strikes, power cuts, and political unrest. But for journalist Allie Burns, bad news provides an opportunity to escape the "women's stories" to which her editors confine her. Striking up an alliance with wannabe investigative journalist Danny Sullivan, she begins covering international tax fraud, then gets wind of a group of Scottish ultranationalists aiming to cause mayhem ahead of the...

"He is psychologist and criminal profiler Dr. Tony Hill's worst nightmare--a killer driven by the most perverted hungers and unmoved by youth and innocence, a killer with a long shopping list of victims who leaves no trail. The murder-mutilation of teenager Jennifer Maidment is horrific enough on its own, but Hill quickly realizes that it's just the beginning of a chilling campaign targeting an apparently unconnected group of young people--victims...

Fife, Scotland, 1985: Heiress Catriona Maclennan Grant and her baby son are kidnapped. The ransom payoff goes horribly wrong and Grant is killed. Her son disappears without a trace--until 2008, when a tourist in Tuscany stumbles upon dramatic new evidence that reopens the investigation. Fife, 1984: At the height of the politically charged national miners' strike, Mick Prentice abandons his family to join the strikebreakers down south. Labeled...

When a dying reality television star's child is snatched at an international airport, ghost writer and guardian Stephanie Harker assists the FBI's search while investigating the family's past to discover a motive for the abduction.

The bodies of four men have been discovered in the town of Bradfield. Enlisted to investigate is criminal psychologist Tony Hill. Even for a seasoned professional, the series of mutilation sex murders is unlike anything he's encountered before. But profiling the psychopath is not beyond him. Hill's own past has made him the perfect man to comprehend the killer's motives. It's also made him the perfect victim. A game has begun for the hunter and the...