Re: RARA-AVIS: UK: Byrne, McDermid, Mina, Turnbull

From: JIM DOHERTY ( jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com)
Date: 03 Jul 2002


Karin,

Re your comment below:

> Val McDermid, The Mermaids Singing, written 10 or
> more years after Report
> for Murder is totally different, really gruesome, in
> fact. There's no one
> hero, although it's more or less a police procedural
> with the emphasis on
> Carol Jordan (the name is too reminiscent of Lindsay
> Gordon), a competent
> and ambitious and detective inspector. There's a
> serial killer who leaves
> mutilated bodies of men in the gay cruising area of
> Glasgow. The chapters
> alternate between the police view of things and
> accounts written by the
> killer, describing step by step the process of
> stalking, kidnapping and
> torturing the victims. The homemade torture devices
> are based on some from
> the Spanish Inquisition, updated with electricity.
> Really horrible. Anyway,
> as far as plot goes, it's pretty tense and hard to
> figure out, but I sort
> of wish I hadn't read it because it's very
> disturbing. It won a British
> crime writing award, possibly the Golden Dagger. You
> have been warned.

I believe THE MERMAIDS SINGING was set in Yorkshire
(implied if not exlicit), not Scotland, and that the city was called Bradfield, most likley a fictionalized version of Bradford in Yorkshire's West Riding.

JIM DOHERTY

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