The Mermaids Singing. Val McDermid

       Copyright

      HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers in 1995

      Copyright © Val McDermid 1995

      Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2015

      Cover design © MavroDesign.com

      Cover photographs © Michael Trevillion/Trevillion images(house); Jonathan D. GoForth/Getty Images (red gate); Patrick Chambers (grass); Shutterstock.com (wire)

      Val McDermid asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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      Source ISBN: 9780008134761

      Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2015 ISBN: 9780007327560

      Version: 2017-03-20

       Praise for The Mermaids Singing:

      ‘Gripping, intelligent stuff’

       Guardian

      ‘A superb psychological thriller’

       Cosmopolitan

      ‘Compelling and shocking’

      Minette Walters

      ‘A deliciously gruesome serial killer thriller. Ms McDermid finds new ways to shock us’

       New York Times

       An Introduction by Lee Child

      This is a twentieth-anniversary edition, which means a third of my life has been shared with Val McDermid, first on the page, and then from time to time in person. More than a third, actually, because The Mermaids Singing wasn’t her first book, and anyway I’m pretty sure I read her before she wrote any books at all – once she was a journalist covering the north of England for several newspapers, and at the time part of my job at Granada Television in Manchester was to study the local press in order to keep current with the local mood and feeling. Which was lucky for me – back then there was no internet, obviously, and no organized recommendation network for readers, so to get my fiction fix I used to walk up to Waterstones on Deansgate and browse the then-chaotic but richly packed crime section, where I suppose I must have recognized her name from a newspaper byline. Local girl makes good, I suppose I thought, which was enough of a nudge to make me give her a try.

      And I’m glad I did. I caught up with what I had missed, and eagerly awaited each new title thereafter. This edition rightly celebrates her first major award-winning book, but she’s far from a one-hit wonder. In fact any or all of her books could or should have won awards, because she’s remarkably consistent. As a reader I remember vaguely trying to work out how and why, and then later as a writer myself I revisited the question with greater professional urgency. I lacked the academic vocabulary and habit of mind to get deeply into it, which frustrated me, because something was happening I needed to know about: over and over again, she was making me extremely annoyed whenever I had to put her book down, to eat or talk or go to the toilet or go to work. That’s a rare and subtle art, perhaps beyond academic vocabulary anyway, but beyond precious to a reader like me.

      Eventually I met her in person, and started to figure it out. She’s extremely intelligent – practically a prodigy as a youngster – but, gloriously, she feels absolutely no need to prove it all the time. Which means everything in the books serves the books, not the author. No look at me! No I did lots of research! I know things you don’t! Which gives the books a rare and self-sufficient integrity. For instance, occasionally she’s accused of being ‘bloodthirsty’, to which I say, no, she isn’t. She’s honest. Crimes are usually sordid and disgusting, and to present them otherwise is disingenuous. Everything in the books is there because it needs to be. No other reason, either good or bad. No inhibition, no pandering, no caution.

      And, I learned, her upbringing was a little isolated and a little provincial, in much the same way as mine, at much the same time. As a kid I used books as a lifeline. I remember the simple ecstasy of losing myself in stories, living them, being them, and I’m absolutely certain she did the same. I’m certain she remembers the feeling. And I think her deep intellectual self-confidence now allows her to induce that same feeling in her readers. Nothing extraneous gets in the way. An academic analysis of plot or character or setting would miss the point – this is a writer still in love with reading, still in love with story, still in love with the elemental rush of immersion in a different world, and now smart enough and honest enough as an adult to keep making it all happen for others. For which I’m extremely grateful as a reader, and extremely admiring as a colleague.

      Lee Child

      New York 2015

       Dedication

       For Tookie Flystock, my beloved serial insect killer.