Great thriller which I could not put down. Brilliant characters, and twists and turns. Highly recommend to others! Love everything by Val McDermid and this is no exception!

EXCERPT: She'd always known that one day she'd hear a headline that brought the past right into the present. Other people seemed to have been convinced that their history was dead and buried along with the bodies in the linen winding sheets, but she'd known the truth. She'd read her Faulkner. 'The past is never dead. It's not even past.' She carried that past with her everywhere she went, every night when she laid her head down on the hard pillow, every morning when she opened her eyes after an apparently blameless sleep. The past didn't keep her awake; instead it haunted her consciousness like a stalker.

ABOUT 'HOW THE DEAD SPEAK': When human remains are discovered in the grounds of an old convent, it quickly becomes clear that someone has been using the site as their personal burial ground. But with the convent abandoned long ago and the remains dating back many years, could this be the work of more than one obsessive killer? It's an investigation that throws up more questions as the evidence mounts, and after their last case ended catastrophically, Tony Hill and Carol Jordan can only watch from afar. As they deal with the consequences of previous actions, someone with a terrifying routine is biding their time - and both Tony and Carol find themselves closer to the edge than they have ever been before.

MY THOUGHTS: 'Poverty, chastity and obedience, Sergeant. And the greatest of these is obedience. Nuns don't lie. We simply train ourselves to forget that which we are not supposed to know.'

Although Tony and Carol are relegated to the peripheral of the plot of How the Dead Speak, their own subplots are integral to the core of this novel.

Tony is languishing in what used to be Strangeways prison trying to find productive ways to fill his time. Carol is, finally, dealing with her PTSD and trying to find a new direction in life. Meanwhile, Paula and the REMIT team are struggling to find their feet under the direction of the obnoxious DCI Rutherford, while also trying to find the measure of their new team members.

How the Dead Speak is a recalibration: everything has changed from what has been before, and McDermid is setting the scene for what is to come. So while this is not the most thrilling nor suspenseful book of the series, it is a necessary one.

The chapters are short and told from many multiple points of view, including Tony, Carol, Paula and several others. Tony Hill's vicious mother, Vanessa, makes an appearance, manipulating people to her own end as she always does.

The story at the core of the book, the bodies at the convent, is at times overshadowed by all the other threads. Sometimes less is more, and I have the feeling that we could have done with a bit less in the way of the number of plot threads.

If you are a fan of having everything tied up neatly at the end of a book, then How the Dead Speak is not for you. I don't require a neat and tidy ending, but even I was left feeling a little disappointed.

Despite all my quibbles, I enjoyed this more than not and I am a definite starter for the next in this series. If you haven't read any previous books in this series I recommend that you don't start with this one as it requires the reader to be aware of a lot of back history.

Mcdermid's writing is, as always, sharp, bleak and tempered with a little black humour. I can't wait to see what direction she is going to send Tony and Carol in next.

⭐⭐⭐.6

#HowtheDeadSpeak #NetGalley

I: valmcdermid @groveatlantic

T: @valmcdermid @groveatlantic

#contemporaryfiction #crime #murdermystery #policeprocedural

THE AUTHOR: Val McDermid
is a Scottish crime writer, best known for a series of novels featuring clinical psychologist Dr. Tony Hill in a grim sub-genre that McDermid and others have identified as Tartan Noir. She writes full time and divides her time between Cheshire and Edinburgh. At Raith Rovers football stadium, a stand has been named after McDermid.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Grove Atlantic via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of How the Dead Speak by Val McDermid for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

For an explanation of my rating system please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com

This review is also published on Twitter, Amazon, Instagram and my webpage

It's probably not a great idea to dive into a series starting with the 11th installment, but I still found this an enjoyable read. The story really gets started once 40 bodies are found on the grounds of a former girls' school run by nuns. McDiarmid explores the sadism of a religious order who sees the underprivileged girls in their care as undeserving, morally unsalvageable, and in need of punishment. Parallel to this investigation, Tony Hill's experience as a prisoner, and his attempts to help out his fellow prisoners, make for an interesting meditation on ideas about who deserves and who can be helped.

I haven’t read one of this series for quite a while, and although I enjoyed it, I don’t think it was one of her best. But then that’s still pretty good.

How the Dead Speak is the 11th book of Val McDermid's Carol Jordan/Tony Hill series. I have read one Val McDermid book before but from her Karen Pirie series, and I had loved it at the time. So, I was excited to read a book from another series and though I'm not starting from book 1, I still enjoyed it. The book is well-paced with a host of well-written main and secondary characters. The story has multiple tracks, most of which are tied up neatly by the end. There are a few issue which were not resolved, which frustrated me. Overall, a very thrilling story which I really enjoyed. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher, Grove Atlantic/Atlantic Press, for providing me with an ARC of this book.

carol Jordan and Tony Hill have been the best characters in a thriller novel since I started reading Val McDermid's series in high school. I don't think that the show did it justice, although Robson Green made an incredible Tony.
From what McDermid has said, this may be the last installment of this particular series, which crushes my heart. But I think that How the Dead Speak leaves Tony and Carol in a good enough place to finally come out of the dark and into the light.
But the other characters in the novel do a lot of heavy lifting, so much so that in this apparently final chapter of the series, it was their voices we heard more than either Tony or Carol's.
If you're a fan of these books, you absolutely have to read this one, because you won't be disappointed.

How the Dead Speak is the 11th entry in McDermid's Tony Hill & Carol Jordan series, but the first one that I've read. It reads easily as a standalone, but makes me want to go back and read the series from the beginning. It's important to note that Hill and Jordan are really secondary characters in this novel. The star is DI Paula McIntyre. Although I haven't read any of her Tony Hill novels, I am a huge fan of Val McDermid. Reading her latest offering just cements my opinion of her talent.

This novel is about the discovery of dozens of human remains that are discovered at a construction site of an orphanage. The bones date back 20 to 40 years when a group of nuns ran a center for young, unmarried, pregnant girls. As if that weren't bad enough, a different set of remains are discovered on a nearby plot, but these bones are recent! Enter DI McIntyre assigned to solve the case. In a secondary plot, Carol Jordan is invited to join a group of law professionals who look into miscarriages of justice, and Tony Hill is in prison working on a book.

McDermid is a brilliant author, and I'm glad there are more of her books out there for me to read. Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

At the outset of McDermid's latest novel, Tony Hill is languishing in prison and Carol Jordan has left the force and is struggling to deal with PTSD. The ReMIT team are picking up the pieces and trying to regroup under a new careerist DCI. When forty skeletons are unearthed under an old convent, the DCI claims the case and the team gets to work.

Carol's efforts to find peace in seclusion are upended by two women: Tony's mother demands that Carol track down and punish a financial adviser who cheated her. The second intervention os from a lawyer who pushes her to get involved in an organisation trying to free wrongly-convicted people. Very reluctantly, Carol goes along with both of these plans.

The plotting in this novel is not that complicated; things seem to move forward inexorably to a conclusion. Some red herrings are set up but disposed of pretty quickly. Tony does not play a role in the mystery-solving; it read like his storyline is there merely to serve as a sort of placeholder. This book did rather feel like McDermid was getting her ducks in a row for the next steps to be taken by the former and present members of the ReMIT team.

I’ve adored the Tony Hill series by Val McDermid honestly ever since I saw the TV series, and started reading all the novels out at that point. I have continued to read along as new installments came out, and when How The Dead Speak appeared on NetGalley, I immediately requested it. Unfortunately, this was not a success for me. The last book already took the story in a direction that I wasn’t too fond of, but this one did not improve.

I think my main problem with the story is that what makes the Tony Hill stories so gripping and interesting is the usually twisted and gruesome serial killers, where we, along with our crew, are slowly trying to figure out why the murders are happening, what the motivation behind it is, the symbolism, all the lovely psychological profiling you could want. In this installment however, we have a non-existent mystery. We pretty much know from the start whodunnit, and even why-dunnit to an extent, and it’s everything we’ve seen before – I could have paraphrased it before reading and would probably be close to the mark. I always find the profiling the most interesting part of the story, and there was none of that.

Now, I really like our characters, and I don’t mind seeing how the relationships develop under the strain of an intriguing investigation. In this story it’s pretty much the only thing we’re seeing, and the murder investigation takes a backseat – and in the end I stopped caring. It also turned the story from the usual dark and gritty into light and simple. Paula was the only interesting character, the new additions to the team just fill the staple trope slots in a procedural, without any twists to make them more appealing.

There is exploration of PTSD in a different shape than I’ve seen before, which was a nice addition, but I would have loved if it had been woven into the mystery, like usually happens in these books. All the characters have struggled with immense issues in the past, but it was always on par with the rest of the story, which made for much more invested reading.

I hate to let go of a series and premise that I have enjoyed for so long, but I think that unless we follow different protagonists – say, Paula and a team of her own – I don’t think I will continue this series.

Human remains are unexpectedly found when a property developer begins digging on land purchased from a convent. Once the police take over they find a burial ground, beginning an investigation to identify the bodies and how they ended up in unmarked graves. The main characters are also dealing with the fallout from a previous case.

This is an interesting and well-paced character driven mystery. You can read this book as a standalone but the relationships will be clearer, and the character situations more powerful, if you read the series in order. Also, this book contains major spoilers for a prior book.

Content Warnings: SPOILER misogynistic language; abelist language; racism END SPOILER

The opinions in this review are honest and my own. #mystery #policeprocedural

While I am very familiar with Val McDermid’s Carol Jordan & Tony Hill series from having watched the Wire in the Blood show some years ago, How the Dead Speak is the first book of the series I’ve actually read. And it was well worth the reading. There have been many changes in the formerly close ReMIT police team that Carol led in the past, the group that Tony Hill consulted to before the horrible end to the last case. Now Carol and Tony have gone on their own separate paths and the ReMIT group is being reformed with a new leader and new members.

The first case is unusual, to say the least. A former convent, school and refuge for girls that has been closed for years is finally being torn down and the grounds torn up to prepare for new construction. During the first pass through the lawn, bones were turned up with the soil. Many bones and many skulls. Who did this? The nuns?

Since I have not been up to date with the series, I was not current with the secondary characters. The strongest here is Paula who appears to be carrying her role over from the prior book. As a skilled interviewer, she is vital to the group’s success, not valued by her new boss but definitely appreciated by most members of her team. I will enjoy reading more about her.

Carol and Tony do not work with the police now. That last case changed everything. Now they each are working on their own lives and issues. We are able to “ride along” as they do so in parallel to the primary police action. Each chapter is headed by a quote from a book that Tony is writing. There is an overarching question among all that know the two: what will their relationship be in the future? Will it heal?

I think I will plan to read some of the earlier books in the series selectively to see how everything reached this point. And I wonder where McDermid will take these people next. She is an excellent writer who keeps the pacing, multiple plots and various characters all moving along steadily and consistently. I do recommend reading How the Dead Speak but I suggest you know at least a bit about the characters and series beforehand.

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Val McDermid never fails 14th in the series another exciting well written thriller.All her books are terrific reads tense chilling with twists and turns.#netgalley#groveatlantic

As the novel opens, things have changed for Detective Carol Jordan and profiler Tony Hill. They are not working together for the police. Instead, Carol has left the force due to the way her last case ended in violence and Tony is in prison. They are not in contact as Tony has told her he doesn't want to see her again until she takes steps to work on her issues.

But crime goes on. A discovery of over forty bodies has been made at a former orphanage run by the Catholic Church, specifically by an order of nuns. Are these young girls' bodies the result of abuse and murder or are they just deaths that were not registered? While investigating the deaths, Carol's former team makes another discovery. Eight more bodies, this time more recent and of young men, are found in the caretaker's garden. There is not much question that these more recent bodies are murders. Are the two sets of bodies related? Has the same killer been working for years or are there two separate murderers?

Carol, in the meantime, continues reconstructing her life away from the police. She has converted a barn into her new home, doing all the work herself. As she casts about for her next task, she gets caught up in two investigations. The first is one she doesn't want to do: helping Tony's mother locate the man who stole all her money. The second may become her new job; investigating the case of a man who may have been wrongfully convicted.

Tony is also casting about for his next steps. He is doing a radio program from within the prison for other inmates, attempting to help them improve their lives through meditation. He is also interested in starting literacy programs for those prisoners who cannot read. Outside of that, he is working on writing a book he has promised his publisher for years.

This is a departure from the Hill/Jordan novels the reader is familiar with. It is the eleventh novel in the series. While the others follow one specific case and are full of police procedure and twisted criminals that Tony Hill's talents can uncover, this novel is more of an exploration of the relationship between the two protagonists and where their relationship may lead in the future. It will be interesting to see where McDermid plans to take this series. This book is recommended for mystery readers.

Tony is in prison where he is teaching. Carole is only slowly emerging from her protective shell and joined a legal advocacy group. DI Paula McIntyre is the police presence here.

A construction project finds a cemetery of children's bones behind an old Catholic school and, as the forensic teams search the grounds, they also discover bodies recently buried under a garden patch. One of the bodies is a suspect in a current case, which makes for a nice tangle.

Val McDermid's books are always enjoyable. In this one I particularly liked the Tony in Jail segments, as he learns to live inside a prison without being harmed or going mad.

This is a great series and I especially liked this book because the plot tied up some loose ends. It was well paced and I found it hard to break away. I do recommend reading the books in order as they flow from one to the next.
Many thanks to Grove Atlantic Press and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Psychologist/profiler Tony Hill is serving four years for manslaughter. He is trying to keep busy behind bars, writing a book and beginning programs to benefit prisoners. He refuses to let his partner and lover Carol Jordan visit until she seeks help with issues that are plaguing her.
She was fired from the force, over circumstances related to their last case, that also caused Tony to be in prison. Suffering from PTSD and trying not to drink, Carol finally begins a somewhat unorthodox treatment for her problems. Then she joins a local Innocence Project group, looking into the conviction of a man who supposedly murdered a male prostitute, but no body was ever recovered.
Meanwhile, recently promoted DI Paula McIntyre is working on the restructured ReMIT (Regional Major Incident Team), sent out to investigate when a large amount of human bones are found at the site of a former convent orphanage boarding school. They date back up to 40 years.
While working on the area, more remains are found under the garden of the grounds caretaker, these have been buried more recently.
McDermid skillfully weaves these plot developments together and connects the cases to find a killer.
This was my first time reading this series and I don't recommend starting with the eleventh book, although this is still an excellent stand alone. I am missing the evolution of the characters growth and the background information. I see why this is such a popular series, the writing is brilliant, the personalities are vivid. Time to start from the beginning!
Thank you to Grove/Atlantic, Inc. for the e-ARC via NetGalley.

Where do I begin?

I am sorry not to have read all the books in the series. They are on my TBR list from now on. I really like McDermid's voice and dynamics. Will have to read more, must.

Even though How The Dead Speak is sub-titled as 'A Tony Hill and Carol Jordan Thriller', this book is more about their team and their friends. A story of Carol's recovering from PTSD and Tony's incanceration are 2 of sub-plots among many in this book.

Bodies found on the closed convent's slash school grounds. Some of them are very old but very young, some of them are very fresh and quite young as well. Personalities clash, cases get entangled. Bosses get changed. Tempers flared. And it is all happening against picturesque grounds.

Happy end? No, you will not get one. Hopeful, may be.

What I enjoyed the most are the personalities of characters created on the page. I loved listening to their thoughts and reasoning behind their actions or inactions.

Looking forward to my TBR list.

Coming into the Hill/Jordan series at book 11 is a bit awkward (as I feel I am missing a lot of back story), but this could pass as a standalone book. Suspenseful, intriguing police procedural - diverting.

I recommend this for people who love mysteries. It is a great idea to read the previous book first if you want to understand it

It has been a while since I read a Val McDermid book and unfortunately, this was a complete let down for me. I found the story really lacklustre and dull with no tension and a damp squib of an ending! I read the early Tony and Carol books voraciously and found them compelling and fantastic, so this offering was a real disappointment in those regards, made more so due to the fact that neither Tony nor Carol featured particularly prominently in the narrative. I didn't like the fact that there was no mystery element for the reader and I found it incredibly frustrating that there was no examination of motive. Overall, I just didn't really enjoy this book which was a real shame.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.