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Talkshow torturer >> Wire in the Blood is made for British TV by JULIET WATERS
She could sort of reprise her Silence of the Lambs role and play ingenue profiler Shaz Bowman, hot on the trail of Jacko Vance, serial killer and mesmerizing TV talkshow host. Or she could easily play Vance's wife, Micky Morgan, a respectable superstar in her own right, whose marriage of convenience to Vance is camouflage for her long-term lesbian relationship with her personal assistant. And as she nears middle age, Jodie would be great as Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan, a slightly younger version of Helen Mirren's ball-busting Prime Suspect character. Most of the women characters (and even most of the men) in Val McDermid's 50th mystery book have that tough, smart, emotionally complicated but still likeable quality that Foster has. And the book pulsates with the kind of made-for-British TV drama that's like a cross between Prime Suspect and the British version of Cracker. As a former bureau chief of a Sunday tabloid, McDermid obviously knows exactly what elements go into creating an addictive story. Wire in the Blood has something akin to the power of, let's say, a young O.J. Simpson going around the country killing teenage Monica Lewinskys, while all the time in a fake marriage with Oprah Winfrey. Before I'm accused of exposing the whole plot, McDermid's strategy is to let the reader in on the most salacious secrets in the first few chapters. The tension in her how-done-it mostly revolves around the process by which Tony Hill, head of the National Offender Profiling Task Force, will discover them. What we learn early on is that Jacko Vance, former star athlete (before he lost his arm in a car crash), and now adored and trusted TV personality, has been torturing, raping and killing brunette high school virgins by luring them to his isolated cottage with promises of TV fame. His extensive charity work with the terminally ill is really a way of accessing the hospital incinerator so he can dump the body parts. (This book was obviously drafted before Princess Di's death, thus a line like "between Jacko and the Princess of Wales, you get no peace these days when you've got a terminal illness.") Because of the number of teenage runaways and the absence of bodies, it's unlikely that anyone will ever connect him to the disappearing girls. But Tony Hill has just recruited a team of young bright police officers to teach them about serial killer profiling. As a classroom exercise, he gives them all the data on teenage runaways to see what they come up with. Meanwhile, to add subtext to this page turner, Hill is grappling with his own psychosexual problems. Because of his constant exposure to horrific sexual deviance, Hill has become impotent. This is a huge drag for him and DCI Carol Jordan, who have had to abandon a promising love affair, but it does create tons of romantic tension for the reader. And tons of tension is obviously what McDermid is aiming for. Largely she succeeds in this really horrifying book (days after having read it, I'm still having flashbacks from the worst scenes). But there are some problems. McDermid doesn't have the subtlety and depth of a P.D. James or Ruth Rendell, although she's received rave reviews from the latter. It would have been nice to see more of the psychological parallels between the profiler, Hill, and the profiled, Vance, which is something McDermid touches on but never really develops. And when it comes to the face-to-face serial killer encounter, Hill is no Fitz from Cracker. He's a tad too nice. Nevertheless, The Wire In the Blood is still a complex page-turning tale with a large cast of interesting and very human characters. The Wire in the Blood by Val McDermid, Viking, hc, 371pp, $29.99
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After Jodie Foster has her baby and is looking for part-time work away from the ET cameras, there are a few supporting characters in The Wire in the Blood she'd be perfect for, even if she might have to fake a British accent.