The Torment of Others (Tony Hill and Carol Jordan): Book 4

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The inner workings and more than camaraderie of the police dept. are the focus in this story. This holds especially true when one of their own is abducted. the author held my attention during the first third of this book and the last third. The middle made the story a bit too drawn out. Although the end result was stunning. Stunning new psychological thriller featuring Tony Hill, hero of The Wire in the Blood, from one of Britain's bestselling novelists: 'Val McDermid has become our leading pathologist of everyday evil... The subtle orchestration of terror is masterful' Guardian Both Tony and Carol have returned to Bradfield (the setting of Book 1) — Carol to head a special crime unit and Tony to private practice combined with a part-time position in a hospital for the criminally insane. Carol is dealing with the aftermath of her rape, which occurred in Book 3, trying to regain her emotional stability as well as successfully manage the task force under her control. While she is looking into a cold case involving two missing (and presumed dead) young boys, a brutal torture/murder of a young prostitute occurs. McDermid’s Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series tends to be on the dark and rather gruesome side of crime. Even well-written crime series that go on for more than a few books start to become a bit Midsomer Murders-esque. How many seriously damaged serial killers can one British city really contain? But then again, this is fiction and McDermid is a skilled and very successful writer. There must be enough people who can suspend belief and cope with the violence. Val McDermid is an intelligent, supremely talented novelist and with this latest tale, she is writing at the height of her power. Utterly compelling' Glasgow Herald

The Torment of Others on Apple Books ‎The Torment of Others on Apple Books

A dead woman discovered in a sexual position on a bloody mattress, appears to be the victim of a killer the team knows all about: the monstrous Derek Tyler, who had carried out similarly bloody work two years before. However, forensics have landed Tyler in a mental institution--does this mean that Hill and Jordan are searching for a murderer who is copying the techniques of the psychotic Tyler? Even when the president was finally compelled, as the damage to America's reputation everywhere in the world widened and deepened, to use the ''sorry'' word, the focus of regret still seemed the damage to America's claim to moral superiority. Yes, President Bush said in Washington on May 6, standing alongside King Abdullah II of Jordan, he was ''sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners and the humiliation suffered by their families.'' But, he went on, he was ''equally sorry that people seeing these pictures didn't understand the true nature and heart of America.'' Due to the rave review of "The Wire in the Blood" mini series and countless acclaims on McDermid's works among some of my favorite authors, I finally get the chance to give this book a try. aybe my expectations are too high after all as this book turns out to be one of the most flat and mediocre fictions I have read recently. Condition: Very Good. Very Good condition. A copy that may have a few cosmetic defects. May also contain light spine creasing or a few markings such as an owner's name, short gifter's inscription or light stamp. Bundled media such as CDs, DVDs, floppy disks or access codes may not be included.This is a disturbing, high-tension book, unstinting in its portrayals of psychological distress. One of McDermid’s finest, which is saying a lot. An erotic life is, for more and more people, that whither can be captured in digital photographs and on video. And perhaps the torture is more attractive, as something to record, when it has a sexual component. It is surely revealing, as more Abu Ghraib photographs enter public view, that torture photographs are interleaved with pornographic images of American soldiers having sex with one another. In fact, most of the torture photographs have a sexual theme, as in those showing the coercing of prisoners to perform, or simulate, sexual acts among themselves. One exception, already canonical, is the photograph of the man made to stand on a box, hooded and sprouting wires, reportedly told he would be electrocuted if he fell off. Yet pictures of prisoners bound in painful positions, or made to stand with outstretched arms, are infrequent. That they count as torture cannot be doubted. You have only to look at the terror on the victim's face, although such ''stress'' fell within the Pentagon's limits of the acceptable. But most of the pictures seem part of a larger confluence of torture and pornography: a young woman leading a naked man around on a leash is classic dominatrix imagery. And you wonder how much of the sexual tortures inflicted on the inmates of Abu Ghraib was inspired by the vast repertory of pornographic imagery available on the Internet -- and which ordinary people, by sending out Webcasts of themselves, try to emulate. Condition: Acceptable. Item in good condition. Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc. Wow – probably the most suspenseful crime thriller we’ve read in quite a while, and first to earn for 2020 our rarely accorded 5-stars. “Torment” is the fourth in Scot Val McDermid’s Tony Hill & Carol Jordan now 11-book series, this being an earlier one from 2004. DCI Carol has finally returned to work after a brutal rape in a previous undercover assignment obviously gone way wrong; and Tony has decided to return to working at a mental institute part-time. Carol has a new job heading a Major Incident Team, and while they pursue a couple of child abductions never solved, a vicious killer starts duplicating some horrid murders against prostitutes for which there was already a captured and confessed killer incarcerated at the institute where Tony works. For a while that confuses the whole police force but a second murder gets Tony to wondering if a third-person “puppeteer” might be pulling the strings. Finally Carol’s team very reluctantly agrees to a police higher-up demand to have one of her females try to run an undercover sting, and all again goes haywire. Carl rapes Paula, Carol and her team hunt for Paula, and Tony suspects that a police officer is controlling Derek and Carl as only someone involved with this sting could have sabotaged it. Tony confronts Sergeant Jan Shields, who has been using mind manipulation to make others kill because she's a control freak.

The Torment of Others by Val McDermid | Crime Books The Torment of Others by Val McDermid | Crime Books

Tony and Carol work together to solve the crimes but their relationship is complicated by a handsome geologist(!!) who gets involved with Carol as well as a theory of the case that Toby develops that he feels he can’t reveal to her.It’s hard to know what to praise first here: the impeccable plotting or the sharp social relevance of the narrative (a McDermid speciality). Most of all, though, it’s the relationship between her two central characters that makes THE TORMENT OF OTHERS work so well. This is a real, adult relationship; complex, combative and nuanced. The ending was not at all what I expected. Not even a little and it takes a lot for me to be totally surprised by a crime novel. The identity of The Voice was a surprise to me, and I think to most readers. It was the unmasking of this criminal that kept me reading until 6 a.m. Then there were a few details to tie up, mostly involving members of Carol’s team. Also, the murder of the two missing young boys was solved, although not without some additional heartbreak for the team. After all, we're at war. Endless war. And war is hell, more so than any of the people who got us into this rotten war seem to have expected. In our digital hall of mirrors, the pictures aren't going to go away. Yes, it seems that one picture is worth a thousand words. And even if our leaders choose not to look at them, there will be thousands more snapshots and videos. Unstoppable. Jordan series written by Val McDermid. The main characters are recovering from the harrowing events of Book 3 (THE LAST TEMPTATION).

The Torment of Others (Tony Hill and Carol Jordan, Book 4 The Torment of Others (Tony Hill and Carol Jordan, Book 4

A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read. Top criminal psychologist Dr Tony Hill is prepared to think the unthinkable – this is not a copycat murder but something much stranger. While DCI Carol Jordan and her team mount a desperate and dangerous undercover police operation to trap the murderer, Hill heads towards a terrifying face-off with one of the most perverse killers he has ever encountered… I get that in 2005, we weren't as big about things like computer metadata as we are today. But where did this absolutely horrific, incorrect bit about the brain come from? I mean... what was that garbage?

Tagged with: ★ 5 Stars, 2000s, British, Noir, Old Peculier Award, Police Procedural, Prostitution, Psychological, Thriller And, of course, the telling. How often the action stops so we can be told things--things that aren't endearing, aren't flattering, aren't pleasant. And the constant explaining and info dumps destroy any tension that's building around the cases. Despite the lousy characterization, a thriller can definitely redeem itself by having a rolling and twisting plot. To my surprise, it's not the case in this book. The dual plot lines strangely not intertwine in the end and the case about the missing child is just nothing more than a boring filler lasted for nearly half of the book. Another half concerning the serial hooker killer is comparatively more compelling considering there are more actions and development, but its pace oddly slows down in the middle of the book and given the distraction of the excruciating other half, its satisfactory ending just comes too little too late. So with Carol’s expertise in criminal investigation and Tony’s unbelievable ability to get inside the heads of the weird and the troubled the hunt’s afoot. Things go really pear shaped when Carol puts one of her young female officer on the street, under cover as a prostitute, to be used as a lure only to have her officer get taken right under the noses of the task force. The pace and tension is now cranked up several notches.