Fever of the Bone

Suberbly crafted prose, this is the rare sort of thing that makes me green with envy as a writer. I'd figured out the plot twists before the final act (which is rare for me) but it didn't matter because the writing was so good I was gripped anyway.

I've had issues with some of the previous books in the series but it's been a while since I read them and this is so good that I feel I must revisit them. Blew me away.

I think if I was a police person I would welcome DCI Carol Jordan as my superior. She is dedicated (sometimes to the point of obsession) driven, and yet trusting of those within her department who display the same attributes. She is super efficient at managing a small team, allowing her most trusted sufficent latitude to get the job done, but woe betide anyone who takes advantage of this trust as they will become the focus of her extreme wrath.
A teenager is found murdered, and mutilated in the most horrific fashion causing great concern and worry that the perpetrator remains unchecked. In the meantime psychotherapist Tony Hill is empolyed to help an adjoining police force when a similar incident occurs. As the body count rises Tony and show more Carol realize that this barbarous killing is not random, and they must work together efficiently to ascertain just why an apparently unconnected group of young people are being targeted.

Carol has a newly appointed superior: Chief Constable James Blake, a pedantic and fussy little man more concerned with data and cost saving than actual crime solving. In the meantime Tony is unravelling the mystery that was his father Edmund Arthur Blythey, and what he discovers is not quite what he expected.

This is crime writing at its best, yes it doesnt get any better than this! The Carol Jordan books are a little more gritty, and graphic than the DCI Karen Pirie series, but such descriptions are limited and essential if we are to fully understand the great mind and deductive skills of Tony Hill. A truly brilliant read that grips the reader from the start and once again shows Val McDermid as the queen of crime :) show less

I finished listening to Fever of the Bone by Val McDermid. It's one of the books in her Tony Hill series. Dr. Hill finds out something important about the father he never knew (what he finds out about his monstrous mother was not surprising). The series includes other strong characters, particularly Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan. We also follow her crack team of police officers. When they aren't investigating major crimes, they solve cold cases. In this book, they do both. I did not remotely suspect why four teenagers were kidnapped, murdered, and mutilated. The answer was complex.

A problem for Carol and their team is their new boss. He's one of those big ego types who thinks he knows best, is ambitious, and cares too much show more about the budget. Dr. Hill may be a brilliant criminal profiler, but the boss thinks he's too expensive, and demands DCI Jordan use police profilers.

Although the police profiler turns out to lack the needed empathy for the job, at least it means another city gets to hire Dr. Hill for the murder of a 14-year-old girl. It's quite frustrating for the reader/listener that we realize early on that the same killer is involved in Tony and Carol's cases, but they don't find that out for quite a while. It's suspenseful when, after the first murder, we get to see how the future victims are sucked in, knowing they're doomed.

The cold case is also interesting. I liked the way technology was used to find the bodies when the husband has been claiming for over a decade that his wife ran off with their baby.

Carol confronts the loathsome Vanessa on Tony's behalf (if one hasn't read any of the series before, not only does Tony bear the psychic scars of his upbringing, but if not for Carol, Vanessa would have tricked Tony into signing over his inheritance from his father while Tony was in the hospital).

I haven't listened to all of the series, but the books I have listened to have been excellent mysteries. show less

Relationships (personal, business, familial, friendship) are complicated things, as the 6th Tony Hill and Carol Jordan book FEVER IN THE BONE explores.

The central investigation centres around the brutal deaths of a number of apparently unconnected teenage victims. Starting out with a look at the victims themselves, and therefore into their family relationships, McDermid simultaneously weaves in a closer look at the families of her main characters. Tony's hitherto unknown father, and his non-relationship with his mother; the strange little "family" that is Hill and Carol Jordan's friendship; even the family that is the Carol's specialist investigation squad. Tellingly, McDermid also explores the relationships that people form in the show more world of social networking (going so far, it seems, as to create the social networking environment referred to in the book - which has now closed down I believe).

One of the most important things I noticed in reading FEVER OF THE BONE is that even though I'm all over the place with this series, there was no point when I felt I was missing out on something from an earlier book. I think a reader could jump into the series just about anywhere and find themselves engaged from the start. Sure there's some relationship development - particularly between Tony and Carol - that's going on, but it's carefully paced and it's not hard to work out what the backstory is. Mind you, it probably does help to realise that part of McDermid's great skill as a writer is evident in Tony. He's undoubtedly one of the most engaging annoying characters you're ever going to encounter in crime fiction. Possibly not surprising when you consider that his profiling style is to somehow or other think himself into the head of a killer, but it's definitely not a recipe for being an all sunshine and happy smiling times sort of a bloke.

There is some backstory to Tony, from his childhood through to the recent discovery of the identity of the father that he never knew. There are a lot of reasons for Tony to be complicated and they are explored in FEVER OF THE BONE. There are undoubtedly reasons for Carol to be complicated also. And that's another relationship that gets an airing in FEVER OF THE BONE - Carol has a new boss - James Blake. She has gone from having the support of her superiors, including their understanding that Tony's consultancy role on major investigations is a given, to a new boss who isn't supportive, is borderline dismissive and extremely suspicious of the combination of personal and professional between Tony and Carol. When he stops Carol from using Tony as a consultant to this investigation, he cuts off a lifeline that she's relied upon. Not just because of his skill as a profiler, but because Carol feels safe when Tony is around. Eventually Tony is able to hand Carol a way of ensuring his involvement, but with that comes an offer of major change in both their lives. As the investigation is resolved, the future becomes the next mystery - for them and for the reader.

With every book I read in this series, I find something new to admire. The way that McDermid works with her characters, exposing flaws, highlighting strengths, making them human whilst not overtly looking for sympathy. Obviously this is strongest in the main characters, but there is also evolution in the supporting character set. The way she humanises the victims - again flaws, strengths and all. There's good, solid, old-fashioned police investigating going on, supported admirably by clever technology, but the emphasis is the right way around - the hi-tech supports the slog, enhances the hunches, and tightens up the timeframes within the investigation. And finally, there's a clever, tight and quite chilling plot, with some unexpected but perfectly believable twists and turns that lead to a final resolution that will make the reader think long and hard about assumptions and prejudices. show less

Decent serial killer mystery, which successfully kept me entertained on a tedious journey, but I wouldn't rate it as one of the best. The central conceit is that Tony Hill and Carol Jordan quite accidentally and without each other's knowledge find themselves working with different police forces on different parts of the same set of crimes. Not a problem in itself: the genre allows for (depends on) coincidences like that. The first half of the book, where we know that they each hold the missing pieces of the other's puzzle, but they don't, works very well. But then McDermid seems to run out of things to do with that idea and has them start working together as usual, and it all goes a bit flat.
Another issue I have with this whole series show more is the way it relies so much on computer-based detection. Obviously it's hard to avoid that if you're going to write plausibly about modern police work, but the problem is that there are no clear limits to what you can do with it. With ordinary physical evidence, the writer has to stick to an accepted set of conventions, because the reader has a pretty good idea of what's possible and what isn't, and that doesn't change very much from year to year. If the writer wants to go further, she has to give a plausible sounding scientific explanation of how that is possible. But with computers, where neither the reader nor the writer has any real way of knowing what the limits are (but we're all prepared to believe the worst) the writer can decide quite arbitrarily what she wants the police to be able to find out at any given moment, and be as vague as she likes about how they do it ("Stacey did something complicated with her mouse and a picture of the killer appeared on the whiteboard..."). Call me old-fashioned, but for me that takes a lot of the interest of detective stories away. show less

For a long time one of my favorite series was the Tony Hill/Carol Jordan police procedurals by Val McDermid. For some reason, I have not read one of these books in quite some time and recently when I was sorting through my various series, I realized that I needed to get back to this series by reading number 6, Fever in the Bone.

Although it’s been some time since I have read this series, I found it easy to jump back into the lives of psychological profiler, Dr. Tony Hill and his police supervisor and best friend DCI Carol Jordan. Carol is dealing with work changes that a new Deputy Chief Constable has brought, among them the ruling that she is not to use Dr. Hill but instead turn to in-house profilers. She and her team become involved show more in a particular nasty serial murder case, one involving the deaths of a number of teenage boys. Tony on the other hand has accepted an assignment with a different police force and it takes some time before Carol and Tony come to realization that they are both working different ends of the same case.

The investigations are interesting, well plotted and the story moves quickly. Along the way the reader is able to catch up with most of Carol Jordan’s team members as well as Carol and Tony themselves. There is a decision made at the end of this book that looks to bring about some major changes to the series. I will certainly not let this series slip through the cracks again as I am looking forward to number 7 and finding out where these characters are heading. show less

Another enjoyable if routine romp in the world of Tony Hill the emotionally-damaged psychologist and feisty detective Carol Jordan. Somebody is picking off apparently random teenagers by grooming them on a social networking group and then luring them to a messy demise. DCI Jordan is forbidden from consulting Dr Hill by her new Chief Constable and in any case Tony has been summoned to another part of the the country on an apparently unrelated case. But will they be able to work their magic together?

I have to say that, on the basis two pieces of information both available to Carol Jordan, I'd accurately done my own bit of profiling before much more than a hundred pages were up, but it took another 400 pages for Tony and Carol and her team show more to come up with a denouement. I have a strong sense that the author is hoist with her own petard; she intended Tony Hill to be a one off in The Mermaids Singing and by her won admission she'd said everything there was to know about Tony in that first book, but it's this series that brings the money in via television. The feeling of strain here is palpable. The dark and disturbing goings on of Mermaids is missing; our killer doesn't do torture but rather gives the victims a painless death before mutilating them. The focus is less on the murders and much more on the interactions and relationships between the investigators, and there's a clear leaning towards the much gentler Lindsay Gordon lesbian romance mysteries. There's a heart-warming if unconvincing subplot for Tony Hill, who feels more and more like an awkward extra in his own series, and there's a forgettable cold case to be resolved without adding anything to the whole. The whole caboodle is about 250 pages too long and I'm sure this is more a reflection of the marketing department's demands than Val's qualities as a writer. show less