This is my 3rd McDermid novel, I previously read 'Mermaids Singing' and 'Wire in the Blood. ' McDermid writes good prose but in this 3rd novel I see dangerous repetitions in character types which, if repeated in the next Tony Hill/Carol Jordan book will make that one my last purchase. Generally McDermid paints female police officers as brighter, more diligent and more intuitive than their male counterparts, as well as more often homosexual. The men, with the exception of leading man Tony Hill, are mostly all egotistical, back-stabbing, power-hungry morons of the lowest order, while Hill is rendered impotent -- a redundant bit of emasculation since all the other males are castrated of their moral fiber. The slow mating dance between Hill and Jordan gets a lot of buildup and little payoff. And in this book, the serial killer and the surrounding hunt for him are as limply portrayed as Dr. Hill. The emotional connection between Hill and the killers in the two previous books is missing here, making the entire killer plot read like an afterthought. And the real villain -- not the serial killer but a drug-pushing / illegal-immigrant smuggler loses character focus as the reader is given reason to sympathize with him as well as with the killer. The climactic scenes involving the capture of one villain and the death of another are without any sense of thrill or danger. I was extremely disappointed with this book
Hill