Read the award-winning and Number One bestselling Val McDermid at the top of her game in these three nail-biting crime thrillers.

“Smart . . . skillfully executed . . . nasty and delicious. McDermid tells this wicked tale with style, intelligence and the blackest of humor.” —The Washington Post Book World Rich in atmosphere, Val McDermid’s Killing the Shadows uses the backdrops of city and country to create an air of threatening menace, culminating in a tense confrontation between hunter and hunted, a confrontation that can have only one outcome. A killer is on the loose, blurring the line between fact and fiction. His prey—the writers of crime novels who have turned psychological profilers into the heroes of the nineties. But this killer is like no other. His bloodlust shatters all the conventional wisdom surrounding the motives and mechanics of how serial killers operate. And for one woman, the desperate hunt to uncover his identity becomes a matter of life and death. Professor Fiona Cameron is an academic psychologist who uses computer technology to help police forces track serial offenders. She used to help the Met, but vowed never to work for them again when they went against her advice and subsequently botched an investigation. Still smarting from the experience, she’s working a case in Toledo when her lover, thriller writer Kit Martin, tells her a fellow crime novelist has been murdered. It’s not her case, but Fiona can’t help taking an interest. When the killer strikes again Fiona finds herself caught in a race against time—not only to save a life but also to find redemption, both personal and professional. “A gripping read with layers of plot complexity, heart-stopping suspense, and guts and gore aplenty.” —Booklist

From the author called the best mystery writer in the English-speaking world ("Time") comes her newest novel featuring Inspector Wexford.

'Young is a sharp and funny writer with a brilliant eye for moral fudging and verbal hypocrisy, and she has a splendid foil in Miss Mole' Sally Beauman WINNER OF THE JAMES TAIT BLACK MEMORIAL PRIZE 'Who would suspect her sense of fun and irony, of a passionate love for beauty and the power to drag it from its hidden places? Who would imagine that Miss Mole had pictured herself, at different times, as an explorer in strange lands, as a lady wrapped in luxury and delicate garments?' Miss Hannah Mole has for twenty years earned her living precariously as a governess or companion to a succession of difficult old women.Now, aged forty, a thin and shabby figure, she returns to Radstowe, the lovely city of her youth. Here she is, if not exactly welcomed, at least employed as housekeeper by the pompous Reverend Robert Corder, whose daughters are sorely in need of guidance. But even the dreariest situation can be transformed into an adventure by the indomitable Miss Mole. Blessed with imagination, wit and intelligence, she wins the affection of Ethel and her nervous sister Ruth. But her past holds a secret that, if brought to life, would jeopardise everything.

This was the summer he discovered what he wanted--at a gruesome museum of criminology far off the beaten track of more timid tourists. Visions of torture inspired his fantasies like a muse. It would prove so terribly fulfilling. The bodies of four men have been discovered in the town of Bradfield. Enlisted to investigate is criminal psychologist Tony Hill. Even for a seasoned professional, the series of mutilation sex murders is unlike anything he's encountered before. But profiling the psychopath is not beyond him. Hill's own past has made him the perfect man to comprehend the killer's motives. It's also made him the perfect victim. A game has begun for the hunter and the hunted. But as Hill confronts his own hidden demons, he must also come face-to-face with an evil so profound he may not have the courage--or the power--to stop it... The Mermaids Singing is a chilling and taut psychological mystery from Val McDermid.

A Greek tragedy in modern England, Val McDermid's A Place of Execution is a taut psychological thriller that explores, exposes, and explodes the border between reality and illusion in a multi-layered narrative that turns expectation on its head and reminds us that what we know is what we do not know. On a freezing day in December 1963, Alison Carter vanishes from her rural village, an insular community that distrusts the outside world. For the young George Bennett, a newly promoted inspector, it is the beginning of his most difficult and harrowing case--a suspected murder with no body, an investigation with more dead ends and closed faces than he'd have found in the anonymity of the inner city, and an outcome that reverberates through the years. Decades later Bennett finally tells his story to journalist Catherine Heathcote, but just when the book is poised for publication, he unaccountably tries to pull the plug. He has new information that he refuses to divulge, new information which threatens the very foundations of his existence. Catherine is forced to reinvestigate the past, with results that turn the world upside down. A Place of Execution is winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a Edgar Award Nominee for Best Novel.

“Marked by [McDermid’s] trademark stunners, including a climax that packs a vicious punch. And readers are again left to marvel at her ingenuity.” —Jay Strafford, Richmond Times-Dispatch From one of the finest crime writers we have, The Vanishing Point kicks off with a nightmare scenario—the abduction of a child in an international airport. Stephanie Harker is in the screening booth at airport security, separated from Jimmy Higgins, the five-year-old boy she’s in the process of adopting, when a man in a TSA uniform leads the boy away. The more Stephanie sounds the alarm, the more the security agents suspect her, and the further away the kidnapper gets. It soon becomes apparent that nothing in this situation is clear-cut. For starters, Jimmy’s birth mother was a celebrity—living in a world where conspiracy and obfuscation are excused for the sake of column inches. And then there are the bad boys in both women’s pasts. As FBI agent Vivian McKuras and Scotland Yard Detective Nick Nicolaides investigate on both sides of the pond, Stephanie learns just how deep a parent’s fear can reach. And the horrifying reality is that she has good reason to be afraid—for reasons she never saw coming. “[McDermid’s] work is taut, psychologically complex and so gripping that it puts your life on hold.” —The Times (London)