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emmacc6's review
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
erinkins's review against another edition
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
3.0
I don’t know if I wasn’t in the right mood or what, but the plot just felt very one note to me. There were a couple twists but nothing was that shocking. Took me a while to read because I never got that absorbed.
glorifiedloveletters's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Not bad, but definitely not as enjoyable as some of her other books I've read. At least, even though it's from the early '90s, the homophobia and transphobia regarding the subject matter remains somewhat minimal (I mean, I guess. I expected worse), but not everything holds up. I may read others in this series still.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Sexual violence, Violence, and Murder
Moderate: Homophobia and Transphobia
Minor: Police brutality
fayesparallelstories's review against another edition
4.0
Why are forensic psychologists always depicted as so utterly useless? Despite this also being true of this novel, it is also so dark and so grusomely detailed about the crimes that it ends up being a serious page-turner.
zoemaja's review against another edition
4.0
A terrific thriller, a little too much torture for me, but the lack of tired gender tropes made this one of my favorites in a genre I had pretty much given up on.
reikiwren's review against another edition
4.0
A great read although I did have to skim some of the details of the torture!
paulataua's review against another edition
3.0
‘A Mermaids Singing’ certainly has the ingredients of harrowing thriller; Tony Hill, a criminal profiler trying to come to terms with his own sexual problem, Carol Jordan, a female police officer making her way in a traditionally male world, and the murderer, a strange character spurred on by an obsession with torture. So much promise, but it really didn’t work for me. Hill’s profiling was interesting, but didn’t seem to go anywhere, his intimate problem was never really developed beyond plot device, and Jordan’s determination to catch the killer seemed only matched by her determination to find out whether the profiler had a girlfriend. Having said all of that, I was still involved right up to the end, and I do recognize that it must have felt very modern and unusual when it was published in the early 1990s.
molly_roanoke's review against another edition
2.0
Wow you guys this book has a LOT of dated and offensive tropes! Also the torture stuff was pretty gross and unnecessary! I did read the whole book but I don’t feel great about it. Val McDermid is queer so I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt but I REALLY don’t know what she was thinking with this poor man’s silence of the lambs bullshit.