Trick Of The Dark, BY VAL MCDERMID, LITTLE BROWN, $32.99.
Val McDermid is a master of the complex crime thriller and her latest combines flawless, suspense-filled storytelling with a sharp contemporary eye on human behaviour and relationships, which culminate in possibly her most menacing, emotional whodunnit yet.
Oxford University in England (where Scottish journalist and author McDermid studied) is the hotbed for female undergraduate hook-ups and a breeding ground for brilliant careers. Female forensic psychiatrist Dr Charlie Flint and millionaire “misery memoir” novelist Jay Macallan Stewart both babysat “Maggot”, the daughter of philosophy fellow and surrogate campus mum, Dr Corinna Newsam, while at Oxford. When Magda “Maggot” Newsam’s husband, Patrick, is murdered and she begins a gay relationship with Jay, Corinna pitches one former student against the other.
Did Patrick Carling’s business partners really murder him, or is there a female serial killer with an honours in murder on the loose? McDermid lays the distinctive foundations, wings witty emails, posts sensational newspaper reports and even weaves Jay’s best-selling autobiography, Unrepentant, effortlessly into the plot.
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