It’s perhaps fitting that for McDermid’s 25th novel she’s revisited her most thrillingly murderous creation, Jacko Vance.

— Daily Mirror

Val McDermid’s 25th novel is stunningly good, but it comes with a health warning. It is truly disturbing.

— The Times

McDermid never pulls her punches in her graphic descriptions of the evils men (and women) inflict on each other.

— Irish Independent

Her writing is taut, her plotting pacy… McDermid is particularly good at analysing human damage and its effects.

— Scotsman

To write one brilliant book is hard. To write 25 is a miracle. That is what Val McDermid has achieved over the course of her career and it’s why she is a much-loved legend in the literary world… the pace here is flawless and the various storylines are expertly interwoven… a superb crime novel.

— Sunday Express

Val McDermid has done more to establish the British variant of the serial killer than anyone – so successfully, indeed, that everyone else’s serial killers seem pale imitations.

— The Guardian

Fans of Val McDermid’s dark thrillers will be beside themselves with glee.

— Sunday Telegraph

Good to see McDermid still at the very top of her game after a quarter of a century of scaring the hell out of us.

— Daily Mail

What matters when pulling off the outrageous, the grotesque and the outrageously grotesque in crime writing is conviction – and McDermid has that in spades.

— The Scotsman

A master class in how great crime fiction can, and should, be.

— We Love This Book