THE VOICE SEEPS LIKE BLOOD...
Two years ago, Derek Tyler confessed to a sickening quartet of murders. Now the convicted perpetrator remains locked away, as do the gruesome, inimitable details of his crimes, which is precisely why this can't possibly be happening all over again--but it is.

SOOTHING, CAJOLING, PRAISING, COMMANDING...
One by one, mutilated corpses are turning up, each marked by the unmistakable calling card of the same warped killer. Still shattered in the wake of her own unbearable trauma, Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan is called in to make sense of the implausible scenario, with criminal psychologist Tony Hill on hand to complicate matters at every turn.

AS IMPOSSIBLE TO SILENCE AS IT IS TO DEFY.
As a seasoned profiler, Tony is convinced that the new murders aren't the work of a copycat killer. Together, he and Carol prowl the mist-shrouded alleyways of tawdry Temple Fields, tracking a cunning serial killer who seems to be safely locked away yet somehow simultaneously on the loose, preparing to strike again...

From Publishers Weekly

The latest addition to McDermid's dark and gritty police procedurals, which have become even more popular thanks to the BBC America TV program The Wire in the Blood, finds the series' usual main protagonists, psychologist/profiler Dr. Tony Hill and Det. Chief Insp. Carol Jordan, joined by DI Don Merrick, elevated from the ranks of supporting players. Topping their docket are two serial killers: a child molester who murders and hides his young male victims and the Creeper, who tortures and slays prostitutes using the identical modus operandi of a killer firmly ensconced in a mental facility. McDermid's strength is the engaging and multidimensional characters he creates on both sides of the law. The book was a finalist for the CWA's 2004 Gold Dagger Award, but this audio abridgment is more interested in story than in character. There are several effective set pieces, notably an undercover sting that goes bad, resulting in the abduction and torture of a novice policewoman, and Merrick's life and death struggle with the child predator. At these points, Doyle's competent but undistinguished performance rises to the challenge. But by trimming away the novels' strongest element—its vibrant characters—the abridgment highlights the novel's weakest element: the less than credible sequences leading to the identity and capture of the Creeper.
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From Booklist

Starred Review In the latest in the series starring forensic psychiatrist and criminal profiler Dr. Tony Hill (which has become the basis of a TV series on BBC America), Hill, finishing out a teaching appointment at St. Andrews, finds himself relieved to leave academia for a real case. The Bradfield Metropolitan Police once again seek his advice, this time regarding two missing children, a murdered seven-year-old kidnapped 15 months earlier, and a newly kidnapped eight-year-old. At the same time, a murder victim is discovered, killed in the same fashion as the victims of a man who has been in a mental institution for two years. McDermid is unusual in her ability to keep the suspense high while constructing social mysteries that are far-ranging in their implications--for example, she touches on the societal forces at work today (such as the lack of true neighborhoods) that make it easier for kids to be victimized. One of the most compelling features of this latest entry is the torment that returning Bradfield DCI Carol Jordan (brutally assaulted in the last mystery) feels as she and her team track down the current murderer while she struggles with the memory shards from the last case. McDermid brings to her mysteries an unusual capacity for compassion, both for victims and for the detectives whose lives are shattered tracking down the killers. Connie Fletcher
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