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The Mermaids Singing by Val McDermid


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
The books on which Wire in the Blood is based. British clinical psychologist teams up with copper to profile serial killers. All expected elements present and accounted for – hostile police brass, sexual "tension," personal issues.

Yawn. And that's pretty impressive, considering books featuring a maladjusted trouble-magnet who does criminal profiling are a huge weakness of mine. But I don't think my emotional needle so much as quivered, except for occasional flickers of annoyed disgust at the violence, which has that smug, gloating feel you get with over-the-top torture scenes that serve no narrative end except to . . . be torture.

That, and I'm supposed to be interested in a criminal profiler who gives the unsubs personalizing nicknames, has deep emo pain about gazing into the abyss, and forgets to profile the unsub's race? I think not.

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