Val McDermid - Val McDermid 3-Book Thriller Collection - The Mermaids Singing, The Wire in the Blood, The Last Temptation

The Mermaids Singing

The Wire in the Blood

The Last Temptation

Harper An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollins Publishers 2016

Copyright © Val McDermid 2016

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

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers 2016

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

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © January 2016 ISBN: 9780008108694

Version: 2015-10-08

Contents

Cover

Title Page VAL McDERMID 3–Book Thriller Collection The Mermaids Singing The Wire in the Blood The Last Temptation

Copyright Copyright Copyright The Mermaids Singing The Wire in the Blood The Last Temptation About the Author Also by Val McDermid About the Publisher Harper An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published by HarperCollins Publishers 2016 Copyright © Val McDermid 2016 Val McDermid asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers 2016 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Ebook Edition © January 2016 ISBN: 9780008108694 Version: 2015-10-08

The Mermaids Singing VAL McDERMID THE MERMAIDS SINGING

The Wire in the Blood

The Last Temptation

About the Author

Also by Val McDermid

About the Publisher

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers in 1995

Copyright © Val McDermid 1995

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

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers 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)

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.

All rights reserved under International and Pan–American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e–book on–screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780008134761

Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2015 ISBN: 9780007327560

Version: 2015-10-08

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.