The Retribution

Carol Jordan, a detective, is about to leave Bradfield, a city weighed down by crime, for a new post in Worcester, a nearby place with less violence. Her longtime colleague, the criminal psychologist Tony Hill, starts to wonder whether their own tangled relationship might also be entering a new chapter. Years of brutal cases have thrown the two together, and a real bond has grown between them, but it has never moved forward.

Before Carol can go, sex workers in Bradfield are being attacked and killed. She has to work out whether the deaths are linked and where the next attack might happen. Meanwhile, in a prison close by, a man lets his thoughts drift toward expensive meals, fine wine and vengeance.

That man is Jacko Vance, once a sporting star and later a television personality, who was caught after murdering nearly twenty teenage girls. He knows exactly who was responsible for locking him up, and Tony and Carol top his list. After a daring escape, he is free and intends to make both of them regret it. The two now find themselves in the sights of a dangerous psychopath, and he has only just begun.

The novel belongs to Val McDermid's long-running series about Tony Hill and Carol Jordan, written by the Scottish crime writer.