Splinter the Silence

McDermid's books are so vivid that details of previous tales remain prominent despite more than 100 books read in the interval between the publication of one book and the next. The newly formed ReMIT or flying squad for serious crime makes so much sense that the Home Office should copy McDermid. The conceit also permits McDermid to reassemble some my favorite characters as a cohesive unit.

Val McDermid’s Carol Jordan/Tony Hill series takes a new turn in “Splinter the Silence.” Jordan, a former detective chief inspector with the Bradfield Metropolitan Police, has to face facts—she has an addiction that must be dealt with before it is too late. Carol’s friend, clinical psychologist and profiler Tony Hill, has borne the brunt of Carol’s aggressiveness and mood-swings before, and he hesitates to interfere in her personal life now. Nevertheless, Hill decides to reach out to Carol at a time when she is in desperate need of sound advice and moral support.

McDermid reunites Jordan (who is appointed to lead an elite “flying squad” assigned to handle homicides and other major incidents across six forces) with DS Paula McIntyre, digital forensics expert Stacey Chen, and others whom Carol has handpicked for their skill, loyalty, diligence, and resourcefulness. Unfortunately, Jordan has made powerful enemies who are eager for an opportunity to discredit her. In addition, an unidentified killer has been targeting outspoken women who publicly espouse feminist views. The members of Carol’s Regional Major Incident Team formulate a plan to identify and apprehend the perpetrator.

“Splinter the Silence” is noteworthy more for the Jordan/Hill dynamic than for the pedestrian case that Jordan and her colleagues take on. The bad guy is a cookie-cutter malcontent and misogynist. Although it is satisfying to see some of our favorite characters back in harness, the author gives them little to do. Tony employs his critical thinking skills, Stacy and her cronies perform their computer wizardry, and voilà--we have a result! This novel is preachy and heavy-handed, and it lacks the depth, suspense, and nuance that make the best police procedurals so memorable.

Predictable and boring .Spoiler alert........who would have guessed that one of the drivers caught drink driving and released because of the deal done to have Carol's drink driving charge dismissed would drive drunk again and kill someone. That scenario was telegraphed in the first section of the book and it came to pass in the last section of the book. The interplay between Tony and Carol is now tedious. The brilliance of her team is almost mystical. The reason for the murders could be believable except for the literary set up to highlight them. Blaming feminists for his mother's death and then setting up elaborate scenarios to punish modern women just bizarre. The author and the police should have left Carol on her farm.

The team is back together again, but not before Carol has to face up to her drinking. Caught driving under the influence, Carol reluctantly reaches out to Tony Hill. And this time Tony doesn’t pull any punches. He tells her it is time to get off the booze. To help keep her mind occupied, he gets Carol interested in an area suicide that has peeked his interest. Something about the death just doesn’t sit right with Tony and he hopes Carol, along with Stacey and Paula, might be able to untangle the mystery.

But when Carol is asked to head up the new police division, ReMIT, she uses Tony’s case to hone their skills. The first thing they have to do is determine if they really have a case. Three women all committed suicide after being cyber bullied. In each instance, a book was left behind. A book attributed to a feminist who also died the same way the three women did. The new ReMIT team hits the ground running with new challenges to face as well as a few new additions to the old group.

But some people are not so eager to see Carol back in harness. And the rumor mill is having a heyday with Carol’s drunk driving charge that ‘disappeared’. Not only does she have to puzzle out the string of unrelated suicides, she also has to face down those who don’t want to see her back on the force.

This heart-pumping story will capture the readers mind as it blends Tony’s profiling ability along with Carol’s detective skills, and Stacey’s computer skills.

It’s great to have the gang back and better than ever in Val McDermid’s latest novel of intrigue.

It’d been a while between Tony Hill / Carol Jordan drinks for me on the book front when Val McDermid’s 9th novel in the series arrived in my letterbox.

I excitedly tuned in for the latest instalment and was (again) forced to change dinner plans so I could read the book in a night!

When we meet Carol in this latest outing she’s retired from the police service and is forced to call on Tony when she finds herself in trouble.

Tony co-opts Carol to assist with his project—looking into a spate of recent suicides—to take her mind off her problems and before long they bring a few other familiar faces into the fold.

This is very much a police procedural as Tony, Carol and the team spend a significant amount of time looking into each suicide to prove that there was (indeed) more to it than local police suspected.

I love that McDermid’s narratives remain current. The addition of digital forensics expert Stacey Chen to the team and a plot centred around online bullying and trolling keeps this series relevant.

Carol’s forced to confront some personal demons in this latest instalment so I can’t wait to see where McDermid takes her (and Tony) next!

Read the full review on my blog: http://www.debbish.com/books-literature/splinter-the-silence-by-val-mcdermid/

4-4.5stars

Here’s a Thriller mystery novel that could easily be tomorrow’s news headline. How dangerous are these internet trolls? See what could possibly happen when some of your worst imagined fears about venomous, online attackers come true in fiction. This plot is a timely look at the psychological impacts on human nature from the loud and broad reach of the internet.
In this case women broadcast on the internet adamant stands on different issues they are passionate about, and as a result they become targets, and later end up dead. But is it suicide, or murder? Is the antagonism they experience on the web so harsh they can no longer live with themselves? It looks like that. Or is there a stalker who is a serial killer, lurking online looking for his victims.
This tense thriller will have you white knuckled when you’re typing your next online tweet or update. It’s part of the Tony Hill and Carol Jordan award winning Thriller series. This is a police procedural that includes fascinating details and professional acumen of the British police team. At the onset of this novel, Carol Jordan has really hit bottom in her personal life. She’s recovering from a deep grief, and searching for some kind of purpose to her life after shattering changes. As she reunites with Tony Hill, psychologist, and gains an unexpected second chance, she’ll be sorely tested because the stakes are high. There’s no certainty that Carol can pull herself together. The other detectives on her team are impressive, but each has a different and interesting Achilles heel. You’ll enjoy getting to know each of these characters and how they work through their individual flaws to bring a contribution to the investigative team.
This author, Val McDermid, is known as Britain’s Queen of Crime. The suspense that she builds in her books is phenomenal. The characters she creates, including the villain, arouse your curiosity about, what your own reaction would be in their situation? Then, what will they do next? Nothing is predictable, in any way. Val McDermid is the bestselling author of more than thirty novels, translated into forty languages. Her individual books have won many prizes and awards. She lives in Scotland.
And if the secrets of real forensic science fascinate you, I also recommend Val McDermid’s non-fiction book Forensics What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA, and More Tell Us About Crime. It’s incredible to read about how far science has come to produce reliable evidence. The scientific improvements are explained so that a reader can appreciate the work. Also highlighted is the unwavering commitment of specific people through history who were determined to improve truth in evidence. They recognized that justice is at stake.

And if you want to hear more from the author, tune into Kendall & Cooper Talk Mysteries with Val McDermid on YouTube, iTunes, and SoundCloud

"Men like him, they loved women. They understood the kid of life that suited women best. They knew what women really wanted. Proper women didn't want to be out there in the world, having to shout the odds all the time. They wanted to build homes, take care of families, make their mark and exercise their power inside the home. Being women, not fake men."

Val McDermid's ninth novel, Splinter the Silence, reunites the formidable team of Carol Jordan and Tony Hill in the hunt for a stalker determined to teach feminists a lesson.

In the aftermath of the tumultuous events in The Retribution and Cross and Burn Carol Jordan has buried herself in rural Bradfield, spending her retirement renovating her late brother's property and drinking far too much. When she finds herself arrested for DUI there is only one person she can ask for help, Tony Hill, who is determined to dry her out. In order to distract Carol from her demons, Tony raises his concerns about the recent suicides of two women who had been the victims of a barrage of online vitriolic and threats. What begins as an abstract exercise quickly develops into a legitimate case and when Jordan is offered the opportunity to come out of retirement to set up a 'flying' major case unit, she can't resist. Calling on former colleagues including DS Paula McIntyre, computer whiz Stacey Chen and of course, profiler Tony Hill to join ReMIT, Carol and her new team dig deeper, identifying a cunning serial killer.

Splinter the Silence is evenly split between developing character and the investigative plot.

It's been a tough year or so for Carol in particular, who has faced several professional and personal challenges. Despite choosing to retire, it's obvious that left to her own devices she is spiralling downward, and she needs help to get it together.

Also very much in focus is the complicated relationship between Carol and Tony,

"She didn't think there actually was a word for the complicated matrix of feelings that bound her to Tony and him to her. With anyone else, so much intimacy would inevitably have led them to bed. But in spite of the chemistry between them, in spite of the sparks and the intensity, it was as if there was an electrical fence between them. And that was on the good days."

Readers familiar with the series will also appreciate catching up with Paula, Stacey, Ambrose and the introduction of new team members.

The investigation highlights a topical subject - that of the extreme cyber-harassment too often visited on women via social media. The ReMIT team tracks down some of the worst offenders who have hurled vile abuse and threats of violence at the victims in an effort to identify in what manner they may have contributed to their deaths as they try to formulate a case.

As their inquiry coalesces, McDermid gives the killer his own narrative to illuminate his motives and methods. While I think this reduces the tension somewhat, it does lend the mystery an interesting cat-and-mouse quality as the police team closes in.

Splinter in Silence is a well crafted tale from award winning McDermid. A strong addition to a popular series that fans should enjoy as I did, it's not one for a new reader to start with though. I'm looking forward to further developments in the series.

Title: Splinter the Silence by Val McDermid (2015)
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press. 416 pp
Genre: mystery, thriller, fiction, crime, Scottish author, English mysteries, series, serial killers,
4+ stars
Author:
Biographical Notes
"Val McDermid (b 1955) is a No. 1 bestselling author whose (29) novels have been translated into more than thirty languages, and have sold over eleven million copies. She has won many awards internationally, including the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year (Mermaids Singing, the first Hill and Jordan 1995) and the LA Times Book of the Year Award. She was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame in 2009 and was the recipient of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger for 2010. In 2011 she received the Lambda Literary Foundation Pioneer Award. She writes full time and divides her time between Cheshire and Edinburgh.” She is part of Tartan Noir, and cofounder of Harrogate Crime Writing festival.
From a personal interview: "You wouldn't know it but I'm very good.... at knitting.
My favourite work of art....is Portrait of a Young Man by Botticelli in the National Gallery. My five year plan....to stay alive, write more books."
Story line:
This novel centers on mysterious deaths of several women who have been viciously cyber bullied. Dr Tony Hill thinks they are more than suicides, but first he has to rescue ex DCI Jordan, who in retirement has been drinking herself to death. Pressured into building a new department MIT (Major Incident Team) she assembles old colleagues and new technologies. I loved Det Stacey Chenn, IT expert and hacker extraordinaire, a la MI-5 style. Tony remains the socially awkward but brilliant profiler. I completely understand his need to have a storage unit to house his expansive library. (I also liked the literary clues). McDermid cleverly portrays the intricate complexities of relationships, consequences, criminal minds, alcoholism, internet trolls and the everyday all too real stories. She has been called the Queen of the psychological thriller.
I await the next book, with the continuation of their complex friendship/ relationship, the new team, another horrifying killer, the departmental challenges, and a satisfying intricate read.
You could start with this book, and then feel compelled to read the rest. There is enough backstory to understand the characters, but the first 6 books were cracking good reads.
NB the audio book read by Gerard Doyle is also very well done.
Read on:
Val McDermid's Lindsay Gordon series(6), Kate Branigan series(6), and next Karen Pirie in December 2016. Or watch The Wire in the Blood (6 seasons, 2002-2008)
If you like Thomas Harris, Kathy Reichs, Patricia Cornwell, Deborah Crombie, Tess Gerritsen, Tana French, Gillian Flynn
Quotes:
She didn't think there actually was a word for the complicated matrix of feelings that bound her to Tony and him to her. With anyone else, so much intimacy would inevitably have led them to bed. But in spite of the chemistry between them, in spite of the sparks and the intensity, it was as if there was an electrical fence between them. And that was on the good days.
All his working life, he’d been held up as the expert in empathy, the one who knew how to stand inside other people’s skin and report back on what they felt and why they felt it.

Received as an ARC ebook from Netgalley, as well as purchased hardcover.

Splinter the Silence is the ninth book in the Tony Hill & Carol Jordan series and after last books trials are Tony and Carol slowly mending their relationship and it looks like Carol is getting a second chance by getting an offer that is hard to refuse. All she has to do is not screw anything up. Tony meanwhile is troubled with a lot of women committing suicide. They have all been targeted by internet trolls. But Tony thinks that there is more to the suicides than that...

It seems that finally Tony and Carol is back as friends after everything that happened with her brothers murder. I quite enjoy having them back to speaking with each other again and it seems that Tony is finally getting to Carol that she has a drinking problem. Of course, it had to go so far for Carol that she has to be arrested for drunk driving before Tony frankly told her that she had to quit. But by then the arrest had already damaged her reputation, which was really bad because the powers that be in the police wants her back, but not with a driving drunk sentence. But everything can be fixed. Besides that is Tony discovering that there is something wrong with the suicides of a couple of women and soon he, Carol and Paula are investigating the suicides.

I found this book story especially good because it finally brought the old team together. I have missed reading about them working together under Carol. The case in itself took some time to get somewhere. And it felt like most of the time the book concentrated on other things than finding a killer. Carol and her drunk driving and the consequences of that took up a lot of the book and I did enjoy reading about Tony finally confronting Carol about her drinking problem and moving into the barn to help her the first couple of days and of course, getting rid of all the alcohol at her her place which didn't make her happy. I do wish that case had taken a bit more priorities it was first towards the very end that books story really started to get intensive. Not that the book was bad, I just got a bit impatient with all the personal stuff. I did enjoy that part when the new team was finally started to put all the pieces together and the manhunt started.

The ending was fitting, I don't want to give it away, but there had to be some consequences to Carols drunk driving and what happened after that. It will be interesting to read the next book to see how it will be dealt with.

Thanks to Witness Impulse and Edelweiss for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Title: Splinter the Silence by Val McDermid (2015)
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press. 416 pp
Genre: mystery, thriller, fiction, crime, Scottish author, English mysteries, series, serial killers,
4+ stars
Author:
Biographical Notes
"Val McDermid (b 1955) is a No. 1 bestselling author whose (29) novels have been translated into more than thirty languages, and have sold over eleven million copies. She has won many awards internationally, including the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year (Mermaids Singing, the first Hill and Jordan 1995) and the LA Times Book of the Year Award. She was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame in 2009 and was the recipient of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger for 2010. In 2011 she received the Lambda Literary Foundation Pioneer Award. She writes full time and divides her time between Cheshire and Edinburgh.” She is part of Tartan Noir, and cofounder of Harrogate Crime Writing festival.
From a personal interview: "You wouldn't know it but I'm very good.... at knitting.
My favourite work of art....is Portrait of a Young Man by Botticelli in the National Gallery. My five year plan....to stay alive, write more books."
Story line:
This novel centers on mysterious deaths of several women who have been viciously cyber bullied. Dr Tony Hill thinks they are more than suicides, but first he has to rescue ex DCI Jordan, who in retirement has been drinking herself to death. Pressured into building a new department MIT (Major Incident Team) she assembles old colleagues and new technologies. I loved Det Stacey Chenn, IT expert and hacker extraordinaire, a la MI-5 style. Tony remains the socially awkward but brilliant profiler. I completely understand his need to have a storage unit to house his expansive library. (I also liked the literary clues). McDermid cleverly portrays the intricate complexities of relationships, consequences, criminal minds, alcoholism, internet trolls and the everyday all too real stories. She has been called the Queen of the psychological thriller.
I await the next book, with the continuation of their complex friendship/ relationship, the new team, another horrifying killer, the departmental challenges, and a satisfying intricate read.
You could start with this book, and then feel compelled to read the rest. There is enough backstory to understand the characters, but the first 6 books were cracking good reads.
NB the audio book read by Gerard Doyle is also very well done.
Read on:
Val McDermid's Lindsay Gordon series(6), Kate Branigan series(6), and next Karen Pirie in December 2016. Or watch The Wire in the Blood (6 seasons, 2002-2008)
If you like Thomas Harris, Kathy Reichs, Patricia Cornwell, Deborah Crombie, Tess Gerritsen, Tana French, Gillian Flynn
Quotes:
She didn't think there actually was a word for the complicated matrix of feelings that bound her to Tony and him to her. With anyone else, so much intimacy would inevitably have led them to bed. But in spite of the chemistry between them, in spite of the sparks and the intensity, it was as if there was an electrical fence between them. And that was on the good days.
All his working life, he’d been held up as the expert in empathy, the one who knew how to stand inside other people’s skin and report back on what they felt and why they felt it.

Received as an ARC ebook from Netgalley, as well as purchased hardcover.

Splinter the Silence is the ninth book in the Tony Hill & Carol Jordan series and after last books trials are Tony and Carol slowly mending their relationship and it looks like Carol is getting a second chance by getting an offer that is hard to refuse. All she has to do is not screw anything up. Tony meanwhile is troubled with a lot of women committing suicide. They have all been targeted by internet trolls. But Tony thinks that there is more to the suicides than that...

It seems that finally Tony and Carol is back as friends after everything that happened with her brothers murder. I quite enjoy having them back to speaking with each other again and it seems that Tony is finally getting to Carol that she has a drinking problem. Of course, it had to go so far for Carol that she has to be arrested for drunk driving before Tony frankly told her that she had to quit. But by then the arrest had already damaged her reputation, which was really bad because the powers that be in the police wants her back, but not with a driving drunk sentence. But everything can be fixed. Besides that is Tony discovering that there is something wrong with the suicides of a couple of women and soon he, Carol and Paula are investigating the suicides.

I found this book story especially good because it finally brought the old team together. I have missed reading about them working together under Carol. The case in itself took some time to get somewhere. And it felt like most of the time the book concentrated on other things than finding a killer. Carol and her drunk driving and the consequences of that took up a lot of the book and I did enjoy reading about Tony finally confronting Carol about her drinking problem and moving into the barn to help her the first couple of days and of course, getting rid of all the alcohol at her her place which didn't make her happy. I do wish that case had taken a bit more priorities it was first towards the very end that books story really started to get intensive. Not that the book was bad, I just got a bit impatient with all the personal stuff. I did enjoy that part when the new team was finally started to put all the pieces together and the manhunt started.

The ending was fitting, I don't want to give it away, but there had to be some consequences to Carols drunk driving and what happened after that. It will be interesting to read the next book to see how it will be dealt with.

Thanks to Witness Impulse and Edelweiss for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Splinter the Silence by Val McDermid . The Scottish McDermid is the bestselling, multi-award winning author of 29 previous novels, which have been translated into 40 languages, sold over 12 million books worldwide. This is the ninth in her ground-breaking Tony Hill and Carol Jordan novels, some of which have been filmed for television under the title of THE WIRE IN THE BLOOD, second in the series as written. It is a psychological thriller/police procedural, set, as most of the Hill/Jordan series, in the current day fictional English midlands town of Bradfield that owes a lot to the real Manchester. It centers on the crime-fighting abilities of profiler psychologist Dr. Tony Hill, and former- and future Detective Inspector Carol Jordan.

Splinter the Silence is built on the mysterious deaths of several outspokenly feminist women who had been the victims of vicious cyberbullying. These women had been targeted by increasingly cruel internet trolls and bullies: the torrents of bile and vicious threats prove too much for some of them: they begin to silence themselves in a series of high-profile suicides. But Tony Hill, who has trained himself to see patterns, isn’t convinced these deaths are suicides. He shares his instincts with former cop Jordan, who has her problems: after the disasters that befell her earlier in the series, she is too busy drinking heavily, mucking up her life to care. Then she suddenly gets another unexpected chance to go back to detection, the work at which she is best.

McDermid is a world-class crime writer, whose best-selling novels have won the Los Angeles Times Book of the Year Award, the Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger and Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for outstanding achievement. She is also a multiple finalist for the Edgar Award. She is Scottish-born, after a long successful career in the rough and tumble journalism of Manchester, now lives in Scotland. I have read and reviewed every one of the Hill/Jordan series, and four standalones as well. Have been crazy about her work from the beginning: somewhat amused to see that, with the recent passing of PD James and Ruth Rendell, both fine crime novelists themselves, whose works I enjoyed, the critics are now willing to acclaim McDermid the British Queen of Crime. I considered her that from her earliest work, as well as the Queen of tartan noir. And what’s tartan noir, you may ask? Darker, more violent crime fiction, leavened by that wicked Scottish humor, written, duh, by a Scot. The author has always pushed the boundaries of what’s acceptable in mainline crime fiction. She combines this with an ability to create nuanced, real characters, real environments, and tight suspenseful plots that careen along. In this outing, she is pleased to examine the worlds of the internet, does a fine job of it. I might have preferred a less high-concept perpetrator, but that’s a minor quibble for a novel that tells such a rich story in such a gripping way, keeps us caring about its major characters, Jordan and Hill, and leaves us hungry for more. So. Long live the Queen of British Crime.

Confession: I read the Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series less for the mysteries and more for the characters and their chaotic personalities. The primary and recurring secondary characters are so realistic, being by turns sympathetic and irritating. It’s why I keep coming back and am never sorry to do so.

SPLINTER THE SILENCE, the latest installment in the series, doesn’t so much resolve a number of interpersonal subplots that have been hanging for a while as it does address them. Chief among them is the complicated relationship between psychologist Hill and former police detective Jordan. The first quarter or so of the book deals with getting rid of that “former” title as it applies to Jordan. As has been used in another context, the game’s afoot to bring Jordan back into the fold of the Bradfield Metropolitan Police, heading up a unit to handle difficult and complex murder cases.

Even as the groundwork is being laid to set up the unit and offer Jordan the job, she is charged with driving while intoxicated. Her problems with alcohol have been developing for several books. They provide the perfect vehicle for her to reach a low point, one that includes calling Hill, from whom she has been more or less estranged for some period of time, for a ride home from the rural station where she has been taken following her arrest. Hill uses this opportunity to perform a one-man intervention, and if his methods seem invasive or even a bit extreme, they work to the extent that such a thing is possible. An administrative deus ex machina makes the charges disappear (though some future blowback from this is hinted at throughout the book), and Jordan finds herself back in law enforcement with her team more or less intact, and with a case before it is even recognized as such.

That brings us to the muscle, if not the heart, of SPLINTER THE SILENCE. While Jordan’s dramas, triumphs and difficulties have been playing out, a serial killer has been operating in plain sight, targeting a specific group of women and setting the tableau of each death to make it appear as if each individual demise is the result of suicide. It is Hill who initially discerns the pattern, but it is a combination of the traditional and the technological (with the accent on the latter) that makes this a success for Jordan’s team, where (almost) everything old is (almost) new again. Meanwhile, the makeup of the new team sets some noses out of joint, more because of who is excluded than included, and it takes a couple of odd and unwelcome alliances to determine who did what and to what end. The result is a satisfying ride with a de facto epilogue tinged with irony and symmetry.

One gets the sense that McDermid has the next few Hill and Jordan books outlined (there are at least a couple of elements that have the potential to play out past the conclusion of SPLINTER THE SILENCE), but it will be difficult to top what has occurred up to this point. What a mix of personalities you’ll encounter in this fine series. You might come for the mystery, but you’ll stay for the characters.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

I’ve written before about my disappointment in some of the recent Val McDermid novels but I keep reading them anyway, just because they’re so darned page-turny. I’m pleased to say this one is the best I’ve read in a while.

Retired DCI Carol Jordan and her former team are dispersed, working in different jobs, or none at all. However events conspire to bring Carol and psychological profiler Tony Hill back together. They attempt to rebuild their fragile friendship and, along the way begin looking into a case that may not even be a case – a series of apparent suicides by high-profile women who have been trolled on social media for expressing feminist views. The rest of the team become drawn in. Meanwhile Carol, being Carol, has an opportunity that she may have sabotaged before she even knows about it.

What draws me back to these books, and what makes this such a good one, is that they are completely immersive. You know the characters but you want to know them more. Like real people, just when you think you’ve got them, they have the capacity to surprise you. McDermid is brilliant at the subtleties of human interaction, the small spaces between what we mean and what we say, the pain and the history that stops some people getting what they want. That’s why the Jordan and Hill situation – two people who can’t be together but can’t move on either – so exasperating in life, is fascinating in art.

Some people have raised questions about plausibility – it’s fair to say the killer and his motivation were the least interesting thing about the book. But that, for me, is not the point. Murders are rare, non-domestic murders, that require high-level detection skills, are even rarer. And yet crime fiction is ubiquitous. Authors have to be allowed a little licence.

What McDermid does do is capture the nature of modern policing – the team work, the specialisation, the dynamics of a group who are both allies and rivals. And she has an eye on every corner of contemporary culture – from Twitter to the garden centre.

She has thrown another couple of hand-grenades into her mix of gifted but conflicted characters which nicely sets up the next book. I can’t wait.
*
I received an ARC from the publisher via Netgalley.

The book focused on three main relationship building efforts. Carol rebuilding her life without alcohol toward a second chance at her career. Carol and Tony rebuilding their fractured personal relationship. And, Carol building an elite police team. Over two-thirds of the book took the reader over and around all of these reclamation efforts.
With this focus, little time remained for the villain. He seemed an after thought and I missed the opportunity to know him in more depth and experience the world he wandered through. Clearly, he had an issue with the role of and place for women in the world. But somehow his motives and actions felt like a stretch to me. I needed more convincing. I wanted to know more about how he enabled his victims to carry out his plans to teach women and the world exactly where women needed to be and how they should act. Could it be that he will appear in another installment?
The book disappointed me. I am a huge Tony and Carol fan, having read all the volumes in the series. But I wanted more of them in their crime solving mode and less of them in "couples therapy". Maybe next time?

“Crushing disappointment”

To quote a phrase in the book (p. 331), this entry in the otherwise superb Carol Jordan/Tony Hill series was a “crushing disappointment.” Out of 388 pages (hardcover edition), maybe 90 pages dealt with the crime and solving it. The rest of the book is a very slow build-up to a not at all suspenseful climax.

I’ve read all the books in this series and this is the only one for which it was a chore to turn each page. Come on, Val, you can do better! Hey publisher, don’t you employ editors to help authors with content any more?

I notice that the next installment is due out later this year. This time, I plan to wait and check the reader reviews before deciding whether to read it.

Splinter the Silence touches on a topic that chills the blood of every woman who’s ever had an opinion online. This murderer is truly frightening because we see him potentially lurking behind our very computer screens; the nasty troll who decides it’s time to take things offline, and silence women permanently. He thinks that making examples of high profile women will change minds of anyone admiring them, putting women back into a 1950’s mold. It’s scary as hell, because it’s plausible.

McDermid also spends considerable time in mending Hill and Jordan’s relationship, and in Jordan finally facing her drinking problem. A satisfying read all around, and one that literally kept me up half the night. Fans of the series won’t be disappointed.

This is the ninth Tony Hill and Caroll Jordan novel in the series, and the first one I've read to date. But I will certainly make a plan to rectify that. The book read fast, and I didn't feel like I missed out too much of references to previous events in this book, so I think its good as a standalone book. The internal battel of Caroll of her inner demons were described well, and the way Tony tried to help her heal was very sweet and appealing. During all this they have to deal with a Jack the Ripper wannabee. Watching woman, and then trying to kill them, making it look as if was by their own hand. This book was really entertaining, and highly recommended.

I love this author and love the Tony Hill series. I enjoyed the reuniting of Tony and Carol but did not appreciate the feminist politics that ran through the book. I felt like I was attending a cultural sensitivity class which I found off-putting and felt like the "education" about the plight of strong women to be a distraction from the plot. I read mysteries to escape and I am fine with specific politics in any book as long as it is seamless and, for the most part, "invisible. It felt at though Val kept beating me over the head with her feminist politics. As usual Val Mcdermid is a wonderful writer and I will continue to pursue her books.

The lead woman character, Carol Jordan, is strong and damaged. The lead male character, Tony Hill, is forced to take a stand when her drinking escalates. I like the series and liked this book as well. But, I must be getting smarter because you could see where the personal stories of the characters were going. The mystery was slightly different and interesting but it was also a side note to the main characters and their stories. It all works and it wasn't as bad as lot of others I have read lately.

I was eagerly awaiting another Tony and Carol book and now that I have it I am hugely disappointed. It bores me and I just can't get in to it. I read half a chapter, put it down and come back in a day or two and read a little more. It just does not hold my attention. As far as people getting blasted and shredded and threatened on the internet it happens as much to men as women.

What price is too high to bring an excellent detective out of retirement? Revenge and a serial killer, do the two make an interesting mix? Pick up a copy of this story and find out! This is a thriller at it's finest! Do you like characters that draw you in, that you become invested in? Bonus, you get that here as well! I look forward to more Carol Jordan and Tony Hill stories!

Good for fans because the old team is finally back together and the plot is interesting — a serial killer targeting outspoken feminists — but this is probably the weakest effort in the Tony Hill/Carol Jordan series. Far less graphic and not as much suspense as the other books. Still liked it, though. Bechdel test: pass. Grade: B+

Splinter the Silence and Cross and Burn are missing the magic of McDermid's previous Jordan/Hill books - less character development, suspense, and thrills. Maybe the characters have been around too long.

i love this book. Finally Carol is facing her demons.she gives me strength to hold on. Val McDermid is on top of everything important in life. She is sophisticated and logical and gave me a good read with a little help

I love Val McDermid novels because they're so interesting and well written. However, I gave this one only three stars because there were parts of it that were implausible and this one wasn't as exciting as the others.