Reviews

• yuck!

  this is a snuff book. it is too grisly for a normal person to read, & dangerous to keep around a house with reading-age children. things like this should not be published in any language.

• サイコパスの歪んだ心理に浸りたい読者向け！！！

  Gold Dagger賞受賞作品！！？？ 20年前はサイコパスの犯罪、警察内部の人間模様、プロファイラーといった道具立てが新鮮だったと思われる。作者はこれらのモチーフをねっちり丹念に描くので（無駄に長い！！）、それなりに評価されたのでは。ホモばかりを狙った変質者による連続殺人を追うプロファイラーと署内の協力、非協力の人間模様も描く作品。陰惨な殺害状況が詳しい（過ぎる！！）。The Silence of the Lambsの言及が何回もあり、おそらく、十分意識の上、おぞましい一ひねりを加えている。パクリなので2星減。テレビ・シリーズ化を意識したとしか思えない警察署内、新聞記者との場面転換、そして、会話だけによる物語の進行で、まるで脚本を読まされているよう。これで星更に減！！会話だらけなので英会話のお勉強には役立つかも！異様に歪んだ性癖とかサイコパス好みの方だけは楽しめるか（個人の感想です）？？

• Es un libro que mantiene el interés de principio a fin. Los personajes muy logrados. El final imprevisible. Interesante ver el desarrollo de la labor de un sicologo en el perfil del asesino.

• Bel giallo di un'autrice che fino a poco fa non conoscevo. Una piacevole scoperta

• ***Spoiler alert*** I’m horrfied that such a backwards and insulting book received such wide acclaim and got to be reedited in a special 20th anniversary edition. The writing is pretty good at first but then begins to accumulate homophobic and transphobic tropes that made me want to vomit. The misunderstanding of trans people is so profound and damaging to a very vulnerable demographic that this book should certainly contain a disclaimer (seeing it was written pretty long ago, in terms how we talk, think and write about members of the LGBT-community), if not completely abandoned by the publisher. I’m appalled, sickened, revulsed and frankly saddened that this is still out there for everyone to read and « enjoy ».

• SPOILER ALERT! Yes, the novel is gory and frankly, as not a fun of gory, I had to skip some passages. However, I still think it’s a great novel. First, because in this case, the gory serves a particular purpose and it’s not there just to shock the reader for the sake of it. By including the detailed descriptions of repulsive violence and torture, McDermid is engaging the reader in a game and puts them to the test, not unlike a serial killer. For instance, Angelica writes in her diary that the torture museum visitors ‘were loving every minute of visiting [it] but respectability forbade them any public display of their excitement’. She even claims that most of them felt ‘the surge of sexual desire watching the exhibits’. It is quite clearly a challenge put to the reader, who has no choice but to start questioning themselves about their motives and gratifications sought when reading the book …. Also, as Tony Hill remarked, Angelica’s diary was not a typical serial killer’s diary. It does seem to include some surprising passages you would not expect a cold-blooded serial killer to make but which reveal a deeper insight into the role of torture during the Inquisition. For instance, in one place she remarks, ‘Extraordinary minds the inquisitors had. Not satisfied with interrogating their heretics while they were alive and suffering, they had to seek further answers from their violated bodies’. What answers could those be, the reader may ask themselves. Angelica does not say, leaving this to reader to ponder. In another place Angelica sneeringly rejects a feminist theory claiming that ‘torture instruments used on men tended not to be directed against their sexual organs, in spite of the tenderness of those areas, because the torturers felt subconsciously connected to their victims and therefore any mutilation inflicted on their cocks and balls was unthinkable’. Is Angelica being sarcastic here? Again, the reader needs to resolve this for themselves. Definitely, I can see a feminist undercurrent in the novel, which I personally love. The most evident sign pointing to that direction is obviously the fact that the killer is a woman and the victims are male. Then, in an ironic reversal, Angelica uses torture equipment devised by men to be used mostly on women. Also Tony Hill, the 'great profiler' turns out to be no more than an arrogant male convinced of his superiority, which leads him to dismissing the true theory of his female detective colleague. Finally, being a vain man, he is so easily led into the honey trap set up by Angelica. While it is pretty obvious for the reader from very early on what the phone calls were about, despite his two degrees, testosterone driven Tony was not able to think beyond his own sexual gratification and succumbed to the mermaids' singing. All in all, it can be claimed that through her killings, Angelica symbolically avenged all the female victims of centuries of witch-hunting and persecution. How delightfully twisted.

• Val serves up excellence once more. There is little else to say except to hope that Val continues to write,

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