The wire in the blood

Val McDermid's Number One bestselling crime series, featuring psychological profiler Dr Tony Hill and Jacko Vance - protagonist of new novel THE RETRIBUTION - in the suspenseful and ferociously readable thriller that led to the much-loved TV show. Young girls are disappearing around the country, and there is nothing to connect them to one another, let alone the killer whose charming manner hides a warped and sick mind. Dr Tony Hill, head of the new National Profiling Task Force, sets his team an exercise: they are given the details of missing teenagers and asked to discover any possible links between the cases.

Only one officer comes up with a theory - a theory that is ridiculed by the group ... until one of their number is murdered and mutilated. For Tony Hill, the murder becomes a matter for personal revenge and, joined by colleague Carol Jordan, he embarks on a campaign of psychological terrorism - a game where hunter and hunted can all too easily be reversed.