'The Retribution': Crime-solving partners confront two killers
My introduction to Scottish crime writer Val McDermid's compelling characters, clinical psychologist and criminal profiler Dr. Tony Hill and Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordon, came from watching the outstanding TV series Wire in the Blood on BBC America a few years back.
By Val McDermid
Atlantic Monthly Press. 416 pp. $25
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Reviewed by Paul Davis
My introduction to Scottish crime writer Val McDermid's compelling characters, clinical psychologist and criminal profiler Dr. Tony Hill and Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordon, came from watching the outstanding TV series
Wire in the Blood
on BBC America a few years back.
I thought the TV crime drama, which was based on McDermid's novel The Wire in the Blood and starred Robson Green as Hill and Hermione Norris as Jordon, was interesting and entertaining. I planned to pick up a copy of one of McDermid's novels, but I have not read one until now.
The Retribution is the seventh in McDermid's series featuring Hill and Jordon, and her 25th crime novel. One does not need to have read the previous novels in the series to follow the story in The Retribution.
Hill is a brilliant, lonely, and sexually troubled man, with a sad background and a number of personality defects that he shares with many of his criminal subjects. He believes this psychological kinship helps him understand their motivations and actions. With his understanding and knowledge, Hill then aids the police in capturing these violent criminals.
Jordon is an attractive, aggressive, and ambitious police officer who heads the Major Investigation Team in a fictitious British town called Bradfield. She had been one of Hill's first champions when criminal profiling was in its early stages, and the two peculiar professionals formed a personal relationship of sorts and became partners in solving crimes.
Making a return visit in The Retribution is Jacko Vance, who murdered 17 teenage girls and a police officer in The Wire in the Blood. This dark, brilliant character is a celebrated handsome millionaire former athlete with a prosthetic arm. He is also a former TV talk-show star who was once voted the sexiest man on British TV. He is charming, manipulative, and cold-blooded.
Imprisoned at the end of The Wire in the Blood, Vance sits in prison 12 years later at the beginning of The Retribution, plotting his escape and eventual revenge on the people who placed him in his cell.
Informed of Vance's eventual escape, Hill writes a report to the Home Office stating that Vance suffers from narcissistic personality disorder. The key to understanding Vance, Hill offers, is his need to be in control.
"Jacko Vance is probably the most efficient and focused killer that I have ever encountered," Hill writes. "He is vicious and without remorse or compassion. I suspect he has no limits. He does not kill for pleasure. He kills because that's what his victims deserve, according to his self-righteous view of the world."
Hill warns Jordon that the mass murderer will surely seek her out:
"For years, abducting and raping and torturing and killing young girls was what gave his life meaning. And we took that away from him. That's been eating away at him ever since. Believe me; making us suffer in return is right up there at the top of his list."
If being targeted by a revengeful, murdering, millionaire psychopath were not bad enough, Jordon's crack squad is scheduled to be disbanded because of economic cutbacks. And there is another serial killer that Jordon and her squad must deal with before they disband and transfer to other units.
Although Vance is the celebrity serial killer, this second killer is a silent but equally gruesome offender. Even veteran cops like Jordon are upset and uneasy at the crime scenes. The murdered prostitutes are slain in various awful ways, but the killer always tattoos his victims' bodies with the word mine.
My sole complaint about the novel was the unbelievable clockwork ease with which McDermid allowed Vance to operate. Sure, he's rich and pays and manipulates others to do his bidding, but I believe that Murphy's Law - anything that can go wrong will go wrong - would have derailed at least part of his elaborate plan.
Still, I found The Retribution to be a gripping and well-written crime thriller. If you've been following McDermid's Hill/Jordon series, this new addition won't disappoint you. And if, like me, you're new to Val McDermid's work, The Retribution is a good introduction.