The Mermaids Singing

⚖The case for it

McDermid does let her serial-killer chapters wallow in cruelty longer than the story needs, and her psychologist hero gets handed a diagnostic certainty the actual field would laugh at. Fine. What she does well still holds. She built these profiler beats in 1995, before every writer since had sanded them into a template, so the setup arrives sharp instead of secondhand. What reads as familiar now was raw invention then, and the craft holds up even where the science does not.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

McDermid's killer chapters linger over medieval torture devices with a relish the plot never requires, and the climactic reveal trades in a lurid psychosexual cliché that has aged about as badly as a twist can age. Tony Hill's profiling carries a scientific authority the real discipline never earned. You will admire the machinery and wince at what it was built to display.

— the honest librarian