A review by starryworlds
The Mermaids Singing by Val McDermid

2.0

DNF at 140 pages.

The Mermaids Singing has a good premise and, in the TV show, that shines through. Here it doesn't. This is due to the homophobic and sexist comments that were littered throughout the 140 pages I read. Those comments became more consistent and made me feel more uncomfortable, due to how often those  comments were mentioned, as the book went on. I dread to think how the reveal of who the murderer is would have been done.

The other issue I had was that it was very gory. Before I had gone into this, I was expecting it to be gory as I had watched the TV show which contains quite a bit of gore. But the amount of gore that was in the book was too much for me as it was making me feel sick and uncomfortable as I was reading it.

If you have read the book and didn't like or just want to watch a good crime drama, I would recommend The Wire in the Blood TV show but I just wouldn't recommend the book series.