The Mermaids Singing * * *

The Mermaids Singing by Val McDermid

a curate's egg
SPOILERS AFTER CUT

very, very good in parts but I was distinctly unhappy with the murderer being Angelica - Ms McDermid sidesteps her own reasoning that the sex change was conducted abroad but I suspect that in Holland you would still have to undergo a great deal of councilling before they would operate. Having the connection between Tony Hill and the killer partly to get him being rescued was a little lame and unnecessary. The killer could simply have been an unknown psycho who chose the doctor for the reasons she had given. And I was just distinctly uncomfortable with making the killer a transsexual -- far too Silence of the Lambs and to me it would have been perfectly fine to have the killer as someone who for whatever reason hated gay men and couldn't accept their own sexuality.