Insidious Intent

[T]horoughly pleasing, engaging, indeed compelling, a very fine piece of craftsmanship. It will reward those who have followed the Jordan and Hill sequence, and send latecomers back to the earlier novels. * Scotsman * Val McDermid, known as the queen of psychological thrillers, surpasses herself here, delivering one of the most surprising twists you'll read this year. Outstanding. * Irish Independent * The tenth outing for the much-loved duo is a reliably engrossing thriller - and one that ends with a colossal reminder of just why McDermid has been the queen of crime for three decades. * Heat * Elegantly plotted, it's pure class * Sunday Mirror * Dark and expert crime writing . . . beautifully crafted * The Arts Desk * McDermid ratchets up the tension . . . [her] most expressive and emotional novel to date, giving readers more than just a clever criminal to get their teeth into. * The National * There aren't many to touch her for insight into the minds of hunter and hunted. -- Susan Hill Here is another gripping crime novel by Val McDermid . . . an exciting book by one of today's most accomplished crime writers * Literary Review *

Val McDermid is a number one bestseller whose novels have been translated into forty languages, and have sold over eighteen million copies. She has won many awards internationally, including the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year and the LA Times Book of the Year Award. She was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame in 2009, was the recipient of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger in 2010 and received the Lambda Literary Foundation Pioneer Award in 2011. In 2016, Val received the Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award at the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival and in 2017 received the DIVA Literary Prize for Crime, and was elected a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Val has served as a judge for the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize, and was Chair of the Wellcome Book Prize in 2017. She is the recipient of six honorary doctorates, is an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford and a Professor at the University of Otago in New Zealand. She writes full time and divides her time between Edinburgh and East Neuk of Fife.