"How the dead speak" by Val McDermid

An audio book.

Dr Tony Hill is in jail. He killed to spare Carol needing to kill. He's writing a book about psychological profiling. He offers to do a little series on the prison radio station. His mother Vanessa stole the chance of him knowing his father.

Mark Conway is a multi-millionnaire. He invites Jeezer, his cousin, to have a seat on the board of his favourite football team.

Stacey and Paula are part of the REMIT team. Stacey has a successful side job. Paula's ex-boss was Carol who's resigned. Rutherford is her new boss.

Tony doesn't want Carol to visit him (though Carol loves him?). He says she has PTSD. She used to drink too. She goes to Melissa, an alternative therapist. Vanessa visits Tony, saying that she's lost £5 million in a scam and wants Carol to get the money back. She thinks that Carol somehow rigged the situation so that Tony killed someone she wanted dead.

Dozens of children's skeletons are found in the grounds of an old convent/children's home closed 5 years before. The REMIT team investigates.

The defence barrister in Tony's case, Bronwen Scott, visits Carol, offering her a job because Carol impressed her. Scott investigates miscarriages of justice. Nielson ("deeper in the closet than Narnia") was convicted for murdering call-boy Lyle Tate, but a body was never found. Carol interviews him.

Mark goes around gay bars etc looking for "new talent".

The police try to contact the girls and nuns who were dispersed around the country and beyond. A girl says that the mother superior inflicted corporal punishment. The groundsman Jeezer says he was asked to bury bodies and that a priest asked him to prepare graves for destitute women who died in the city to give them a decent burial. More bodies are found - men who had plastic bags on their heads. The priest is brought in for questioning. He'd caught Jeezer peeping at the girls. His answers cast doubt on Jeezer's. Jeezer's cousin is Mark, who bought him his cottage and gives him perks on match days.

Paula visits Tony to get tips in how to approach Mark, who slept rough for a while.

Tony does some talks for Razor wireless, the prison channel. Then he starts a reading course, using kids books so that the prisoners can read to their kids. A prisoner takes offence and cracks his skull. Eleanor, a hospital doctor, is Carol's girlfriend. Tony's taken to her hospital.

Paula tracks down the con-man. Vanessa unexpectedly arrives with a knife and gets her money. Paula's disappointed by her own reaction, walks into the sea then changes her mind. Next day the therapist, Melissa, convinces her she's doing well.

One of the bodies is Lyle Tate's but there are newer ones so if there's a series killer, Nielson is innocent. The police interview the mother superior who says she saw Jeezer and Mark bury something late one night.

The police track Mark down. He dies in a car chase. Enough evidence is found to incriminate him.

The religious people are defensive, thinking that people are trying to extort money from them because of a few bad priests. The criminals don't like helping the police. The different police units are in competition.

The book doesn't depend on surprising us. The first chapter already gives clues about who the culprit is. Chapters are headed by extracts from Tony's book, so we know he survives.

I like the way she writes at a sentence level (except for "He wore flip-flops on his feet"). I learnt only late that this is the 11th in a series that's been going for decades. I guess that's why we don't get Venessa's backstory etc.

Other reviews

• Stuart Kelly (This is a novel much concerned with education, about how it can liberate and how it can be used as a weapon. ... The other thematic chord involves, as it usually does in McDermid’s work, the nature of power and the abuse of power.)
• Kate Vane (He’s also refusing to see Carol until she gets therapy. This, for me, is problematic ... just one unfortunate example of McDermid sacrificing the long-term integrity of her characters to make an immediate plot gain. ... McDermid is capable of so much better than this and I think she knows it. )