Vance escapes, after long and brilliant planning, and immediately murder and mayhem is abroad. It seems his vengeance will be particularly directed towards Hill and Jordan, as well as his own ex-wife who seemed to have betrayed him.
In a secondary plot, Jordan and her major incident team are about to be disbanded and want to go out with honours by solving the case of a series of murders of street prostitutes being killed in various gruesome ways, with each corpse being marked with the signature tattoo "mine" on the wrist.
The two investigations are running in parallel, but Jordan is eventually being forced (by the murder of relatives) to concentrate on Jacko. A serious rift develops between Hill and Jordan, whose emotional relationship has always been difficult to define,It becomes apparent that Jacko is intent not so much on immediately killing his victims but on inflicting unbearable pain on them by vicious attacks on or murders of those close or loved by them - a very sick sort of retribution.
This is a long book, with twists and a complicated plot. I thought it dragged in some of the early chapters but then momentum gathered pace and it became a very gripping, if gruesome, yarn. Not all seems to be quite solved in the lives of Jordan and Hill in the final denouement, however. No doubt McDermid has left the door open to repair a rift and for more thrillers to come?
- Geoff Adams is a former editor of the Otago Daily Times.
