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Tartan Noir

Many great mystery writers choose detectives who are exemplary human beings. Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti is almost relentlessly imperturbable; Reginald Wexford, in Rendell's series, rarely has an untidy inner life; Adam Dalgliesh, in the PD James novels, consistently has himself pulled together.

What a treat, then, to contemplate the mess that is Carol Jordan. Ms. Jordan is Val McDermid's invention. She first appeared in 1995, in "The Mermaids Singing." She isn't even-tempered or fully reliable. She has a serious drinking problem; she is in love with an impotent man, just as damaged as she is; she regularly fails to say the politically sound thing during charged departmental meetings. She is dangling by a thread. I really love her.

McDermid explores depravity a bit more thoroughly than Rendell, Leon, and James. How do you know you're in a McDermid story? A child is made to stand in excrement, in a toilet, for hours on end. A serial killer runs around murdering psychologists and then "scalping" their pubic hair. Someone "spring-loads" a tin of cat food so that it will suddenly shoot acid into an unsuspecting victim's eyes. McDermid's terrain seems closer to the worlds of Thomas Harris and Stephen King than to the world of PD James.

So there's the baroque and gothic and horrifying landscape of the cases. And then there's McDermid's attention to detail. She imagines the indirect ploys that a person attempts in an e-mail, then she shows the recipient decoding those ploys. She pauses to notice when a character is scribbling notes rather than making direct eye contact with an adversary. She points out a character's "dress-smoothing" tic--how that small gesture is part of a sexual code, and how it's more important than anything happening in the reported dialogue.

I don't hunt down serial killers and I don't ever have to assume an undercover identity, but I know how tricky it is to get along in the working world, and I know what it's like to alter one's words and one's tone depending on one's audience. McDermid is really telling the story of holding down a job and attempting to make one's place in a complex community--and anyone can understand this story, even if the surface-level details involve acts of scalping and (in one memorable scene) a decision to set a barn full of horses on fire.

So: not for everyone. Not for the squeamish. But I admire McDermid's intelligence. And I'm generally happy to pick up a spooky story. Food for thought--if you're considering a trip to the library.

P.S. People wondered how the Carol Jordan series could continue after the major twists of "Insidious Intent." We'll soon have answers. 2019: "How the Dead Speak." Alluring title....
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