The Mermaids Singing
Val McDermid · first published 1995 · ISBN 9780061011740
A serial killer torments a small English town, and a psychological profiler and a local detective must enter the killer's mind to stop him. McDermid sets the psychological battle against institutional skepticism and the gaps between what the profiler perceives and what the police are willing to believe.
On our lists
The Best Crime Novels of the 1990s
McDermid brought the psychological profiler into crime fiction as more than a consulting device, making that figure a protagonist with her own vulnerabilities and blind spots. The novel won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger and opened a lane for psychological crime fiction that was still being explored decades later.