Book Review: Cross and Burn

Format: Kindle

From Goodreads: Cross and Burn, picks up where The Retribution left off: following the best crime-fighting team in the UK-clinical psychologist Tony Hill and police detective Carol Jordan-who when we last saw them were barely speaking, and whose relationship will now be challenged even further.
Guilt and grief have driven a wedge between long time crime-fighting partners psychologist Tony Hill and ex-DCI Carol Jordan. But just because they're not talking doesn't mean the killing stops.
Someone is killing women. Women who bear an unsettling resemblance to Carol Jordan. And when the evidence begins to point in a disturbing direction, thinking the unthinkable seems the only possible answer. Cornered by events, Tony and Carol are forced to fight for themselves and each other as never before.

Thoughts: You know when a new book in the series you love comes out and you read it and it goes way too quickly and then you're all in a funk because it's over and the author has not yet written the next book? Yeah, that's me as I write this review.
Cross and Burn is the latest installment in Val McDermid's Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series. The BBC made a fabulous TV series based on the series called Wire in The Blood. Robson Green was a perfect Tony Hill.

Hmmm, Robson Green....

Anyway, the previous book in the series left Tony and Carol in a not good place. A major rift formed in their friendship, MIT was disbanded and it's members scattered, Tony was cut loose due to budget cuts and Carol had quit the force.
But yet another serial killer is on the loose and it could have dire consequences for both Tony and Carol.
McDermid keeps her plots moving at a rollicking pace. Discoveries are constant and help push the storyline along. Unlike many reoccurring characters in books of this genre, McDermid's characters have not become annoying one dimensional people whose constant issues are whined about incessantly and never resolved in any way. McDermid's characters have issues, but they learn and grow from them or at least accept them as personality traits they aren't willing to change and therefore don't moan about! 
My dilemma now is what next? Something from a different genre? A different book by McDermid? (she has other series' and stand alones, but I have never been able to get into them) or go back and re-read Tony and Carol from the beginning? What would you do?

The Retribution

Title: The Retribution
Author: Val McDermid
Genre: Fiction - Crime
Audience: Adult
Format: Book - Library

From Goodreads: Clinical psychologist Tony Hill has had a good run. He and police detective Carol Jordan have put away scores of dangerous criminals and have a clearance rate that colleagues envy or resent. But there is one serial killer who has shaped and defined their careers, a person whose evil surpasses all others: Jacko Vance, an ex-celebrity and sociopath whose brilliance and utter lack of remorse have never left Tony’s mind in the ten years Vance has been locked up. Now Jacko has broken out of prison and, with a mind even more twisted and cunning than before, he is focused on wreaking revenge on Tony and Carol for the years he has spent in prison. They don’t know when Jacko will strike, or where. All they know is that he will cause them to feel fear like they’ve never known.
   
What I thought: I love Val McDermid's books that have psychologist Tony Hill as the main character. This series has been made into a TV series in Britain called Wire in the Blood and it's excellent. While several of the episodes are based on books, many just use the characters.
In this latest book, Tony Hill is faced once more with Jacko Vance. A serial killer he helped DCI Carol Jordan put away for the murder of several young girls. Now Vance has escaped and is bent on exacting revenge on those he feel are responsible for his downfall.
I don't know exactly what it is that I love about this series. Like most crime novels with recurring characters you do start to wonder exactly how many traumatic episodes these people can handle before losing it completely. But McDermid manages to convince you that her characters are up for this continual beating up. Maybe it's partly the fact that Tony Hill has been "different" from  the beginning - socially awkward and obsessed with his chosen field of psychology. The first Tony Hill book was released in 1995 - a time when profiling was in it's infancy. It has been interesting to see how McDermid has incorporated the growing acceptance of criminal profiling as the series has grown. Where in early books Tony had to fight to prove his skills and their worth, by now it's just accepted a profiler will make up part of the team.
A worth while series for any crime nut.