Having watched the British television show inspired by this series, I imagined that I had some inkling of the dark and creepy world I'd be inviting into my head. But Ms. McDermid overpowered my defenses. This effort isn't ambitious enough to re-imagine the crime genre, but it does defy enough of its tropes to make it a singularly eerie entry.
Dr. Tony Hill has a secret. To the world, he is a clinical psychologist with a full slate of scary patients who are clearly too ill to be allowed beyond their four padded walls. Inside, though, Dr. Hill is sufficiently troubled by events in his past that he is incapable of forming healthy relationships with women. To the doctor's credit, he is aware of his own deficiencies and goes some way to applying his training to their rectification, but he is, still, a lonely creature who lacks not only a social life but anything resembling a close friend. Professionally, Dr. Hill has been trying for some time to establish a center for national profiling in Britain, a thinktank that would collate crime data and bend the minds of trained psychologists to the cracking of cases that have stumped the police. He's only in the pilot stages of this program, however, when a series of sadistic murders in Bradfield force the police to turn to him to help them find a killer who has easily evaded them.
Tony may have advocates for his program, but not everyone in the police hierarchy is thrilled with his meddling. Consequently, he is partnered with a young, ambitious cop, Carol Jordan, and together, they are set on the scent of a killer who has reached back into medieval times for inspiration, victims left savaged in ways that only Tony seems unaffected by. The future of Tony's profiling program, not to mention the lives of innocent Britains, hang on their capacity to intuit an answer that will lead them to the right butcher.
Though it's not clear if Ms. McDermid drew inspiration for Tony Hill from the real Kim Rossmo, the similarities are compelling. He too attempted to force the Vancouver Police Department to take profiling seriously. Their obstinacy lead to the deaths of dozens of women as Robert 'Willie' Picton was allowed to run amok in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The Mermaid's Singing does not require anyone to know the Kim Rossmo story to be enjoyable, but it certainly adds an additional ghoulishness to an already tight and creepy tale. At times, Ms. McDermid ambles when she ought to be running, and she comes rather close to insulting the intelligence of her readers by implying that her hero may be responsible for the horrors being perpetrated, but there's far more good here than bad, good as long as you have a strong stomach. (3/5 Stars)
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