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A review by eliiisaaaa
The Mermaids Singing by Val McDermid
4.0
I watched the television adaptation of these books when I was younger, and I read a couple of them without realizing they were in a particular order (duh) at the time. I’ve recently decided to go back and read the series from the beginning.
Because the show had quite an impact on me (it was my first introduction to the world of psychology and profiling, and the gory-ness of it captured my weird teenage brain’s interest), I remembered the plot of this novel pretty well as I read it. But in a way I enjoyed that because it served to show me how well thought out the story and characterisation is. I knew what the outcome would be, so I could really appreciate the clues that Val McDermid drops throughout the story; there’s enough there for the killer’s (as well as Tony Hill’s) personality and motivations to unfold slowly and logically, without being so obvious that you figure it all out yourself before she wants you to. I think this is one of the true marks of a good mystery, and I really appreciated this aspect of her writing. It made me excited to get to the books where I don’t know what the plot is!
Because the show had quite an impact on me (it was my first introduction to the world of psychology and profiling, and the gory-ness of it captured my weird teenage brain’s interest), I remembered the plot of this novel pretty well as I read it. But in a way I enjoyed that because it served to show me how well thought out the story and characterisation is. I knew what the outcome would be, so I could really appreciate the clues that Val McDermid drops throughout the story; there’s enough there for the killer’s (as well as Tony Hill’s) personality and motivations to unfold slowly and logically, without being so obvious that you figure it all out yourself before she wants you to. I think this is one of the true marks of a good mystery, and I really appreciated this aspect of her writing. It made me excited to get to the books where I don’t know what the plot is!