Psychologically thrilling

I recently read two thrillers that have both been classed as psychological thrillers. I enjoyed both of them for very different reasons, though remain puzzled as to why the one was even classed as a thriller.

Hailing from either side of The Pond, Nocturnal animals (first published as Tony and Susan) is by Austin Wright, and was first published in 1993. Much more recently a film has been made of the book (hence new title), and I have no idea, not having seen that, whether it works any more successfully than the original. It's a really odd book. Susan is a part-time teacher, generally happily married (though her husband, Arnold, sounds a bit of an idiot. He may be a heart surgeon, but seems to have the emotional capacity of a newt), with teenage children on the cusp of adulthood. She had previously been married to Edward, a would-be author. The relationship began passionately enough, but ended as Edward failed to become the great man that Susan evidently wanted him to be. So, to begin with she had a relationship with all the emotion, but none of the stability or kudos, now she has little of the emotion, but a fair bit of stability (if she can put up with the string of mistresses) and a healthy dollop of reflected glory.

Unexpectedly after many years of no contact beyond a Christmas card, Susan receives a manuscript from her ex, a novel that he's finally completed - Nocturnal animals. The novel turns out to be a violent thriller of the Sam Peckinpah variety, in which the central hero, Tony's wife and daughter are raped and murdered by a party of thugs. Tony survives and finally gets his revenge, but revenge goes against everything he (left-wing, liberal, educated man) believes in. As such, he and the narrative are torn.

It's a pretty misogynistic tale, but Susan is captivated by it (as indeed was I, the reader, too), but Susan is left puzzled as to why Edward has sent her the manuscript to read, and why is one of the characters named Susan? Is Edward trying to reveal something about their relationship? Susan arranges to meet Edward to discuss the novel, only for him to stand her up. And so the novel ends.

Was it a psychological thriller? Well, only on one level, that of the internal book. On the wider level I had no idea what it was about or what it was trying to say. Though it did have some interesting things to say about the relationship of readers to their books, and books to their readers. As a psychological thriller a bit of a disappointment, as an interesting way to look at the process of reading, worth a look.

A much more definite thriller in the traditional sense was the book that really launched Val McDermid onto the UK crime scene, The wire in the blood. After a long time of putting off reading McDermid, I finally got round to reading, and enjoying, one of her books last year - The distant echo. As a standalone novel, it's rather different from Wire in the blood, which is part of a series featuring criminal profiler, Tony Hill, and Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan.

Wire in the blood is a very clever novel, and indeed, appears even more clever now than it must have done at the time it was written in 1997. Ruth Rendell's review turned out to be astonishingly prescient: "This is a shocking book, stunningly exciting, horrifyingly good. It is so convincing that one fears reality may be like this and these events the awful truth."

The novel focuses around Tony Hill, a renowned criminal profiler, who has set up a trial group in Leeds to introduce profiling to the wider world of policing. As a case study, Tony gets his group to look at some missing persons' cases to see if they can find any common threads. Much to his and his team's surprise, one exceptionally eager detective, Shaz, spots a connection between several of the missing girls. They had all attended an event featuring the celebrity, Jacko Vance. Could Jacko be involved in their disappearance?

The idea seems laughable, Jacko is the Nation's darling, but then Shaz meets a gruesome end, and Tony Hill and Carol Jordan realise they have to stop Jacko quickly.

McDermid, an experienced journalist, revealed some years later (for reasons that were obvious in the novel itself, she couldn't have said anything sooner) that the predatory character of Jacko was modelled on Jimmy Saville. Very well written, McDermid ties all the threads together, making the seemingly impossible possible in a well constructed, brilliantly plotted work.

As might be expected with McDermid, there's a fair amount of gruesomeness which I found difficult, though it was integral to the story. What did surprise me however was what I most enjoyed about this novel. It was a brilliant police procedural, it was well constructed, the suspense levels were great, the characters were good, but what I really loved was the wonderful sense of camaraderie that McDermid created as the disparate profiling team became as one in their quest to bring the killer of Shaz to justice. It was an oddly heart-warming read contrasting the worst aspects of humanity with the very best. And for that reason, despite the grue, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. Val McDermid on top form.