Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Killing the Shadows
    Killing the Shadows
    Killing the Shadows
    Audiobook16 hours

    Killing the Shadows

    Written by Val McDermid

    Narrated by Vari Sylvester

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    A killer is on the loose, blurring the line between fact and fiction. His prey—the writers of crime novels who have turned psychological profilers into the heroes of the nineties. But this killer is like no other. His bloodlust shatters all the conventional wisdom surrounding the motives and mechanics of how serial killers operate. And for one woman, the desperate hunt to uncover his identity becomes a matter of life and death.

    Professor Fiona Cameron is an academic psychologist who uses computer technology to help police forces track serial offenders. She used to help the Met, but vowed never to work for them again when they went against her advice and badly screwed up an investigation as a consequence. Still smarting from the experience, she's working a case in Toledo when her lover, thriller writer Kit Martin, tells her a fellow crime novelist has been murdered. It's not her case, but Fiona can't help taking an interest.

    Which is just as well, because before too long the killer strikes again. And again. And Fiona is caught up in a race against time, not only to save a life, but to bring herself redemption, both personal and professional.

    Rich in atmosphere, Killing the Shadows uses the backdrops of city and country to create an air of threatening menace, culminating in a tense confrontation between hunter and hunted, a confrontation that can have only one outcome.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateAug 25, 2005
    ISBN9781596007185
    Author

    Val McDermid

    Val McDermid is a number one bestseller whose novels have been translated into more than forty languages, and have sold over nineteen million copies. She has won many awards, including the CWA Gold Dagger the LA Times Book of the Year Award and the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for outstanding achievement. She writes full-time and divides her time between Edinburgh and East Neuk of Fife.

    Related to Killing the Shadows

    Related audiobooks

    Suspense For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Book Club

      Feb 2, 2022

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      Suspicious Circumstances

      Aug 10, 2022

      Suspicious Circumstances
      7 min read

    • Article

      Suspicious Circumstances

      Aug 10, 2022

      Suspicious Circumstances
      7 min read

    • Article

      Quotients

      May 7, 2020

      Quotients
      8 min read

    • Article

      HERNAN BAS New and Recent Work

      Dec 15, 2018

      HERNAN BAS New and Recent Work
      6 min read

    • Article

      Pickpocket

      Jun 1, 2020

      Pickpocket
      7 min read

    • Article

      Return Of The Bores

      Mar 9, 2022

      All bores are boring but not all boring people are bores. There are plenty of innocent folk who like nothing more than to share their anxieties about the village fête with you – and they’ll do it for 20 minutes you’ll never get back. Yet these are ju

      3 min read

    • Article

      Echos

      Jan 10, 2019

      Before Corrine’s husband abandoned her in Berlin, he liked to say that her name reminded him of the word “corrupt.” But ending in a twist rather than a split. Her last name was the French word for “swimsuit” but he never mentioned that. This seemed s

      17 min read

    • Article

      This Weekend

      May 18, 2020

      Now more than ever you have the perfect excuse to stay indoors, so take advantage of your isolation and catch up on your burgeoning list in Netflix… From the comics by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez comes the story of three siblings and their mother,

      5 min read

    • Article

      Gothic Detection

      Dec 1, 2019

      Gothic Detection
      5 min read

    • Article

      Ode to Joy

      Mar 28, 2018

      Ode to Joy
      6 min read

    • Article

      Nick Laird

      Dec 15, 2017

      I was trying to write like an adult.I had children.I was at the end of something. As I waited at my table by the window for the coffee,I saw that the sirocco had depositeda scrim of dust on the sill overnight,and it was the dark red of powdered blood

      3 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Jul 19, 2023

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Living Days

      Nov 4, 2019

      The Living Days
      9 min read

    • Article

      Ghost Girl, Banana

      Aug 21, 2023

      By the time I was 25, there were only two things I remembered about Mumma. The first was that she smelled of watermelons, the second was that we were happy. We’d taken our father’s name of course, but a name is only half a story. The other half exist

      6 min read

    • Article

      A Book for the Moment: On Helen Weinzweig’s ‘Basic Black with Pearls’

      Jun 1, 2018

      This post was produced in partnership with Bloom, a literary site that features authors whose first books were published when they were 40 or older. 1. In our current moment, a chorus of “nasty women” has flooded social media with grievances. Unfortu

      5 min read

    • Article

      Four Of A Kind

      May 3, 2023

      Four Of A Kind
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Killing the Shadows

    3.5/5

    211 ratings14 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Very well-written stylishly nuanced and captivating mystery. The narrator does a bang on job too!
    • 5/5
      A good story but a very slow moving, took a long time to readTold round criminal psychologist Dr Fiona Cameron and her partner Kit, who is a thriller writer, whose life is in danger from a serial killer
    • 3/5
      I thought this book was amazing. Granted that at first I didn't care much for it because it hadn't grabbed me immediately from page one, but by chapter three I just couldn't stop reading. I really liked the character Kit Martin and my heart nearly stopped for him. This book is filled with action and the ideals and motivations behind the human heart, and I can't wait to read more from this author!
    • 4/5
      A very clever, brilliantly written novel with very interesting well-developed characters and a plot with lots of twists and turns! This is my first Val McDermid book but it won't be my last!
    • 5/5
      There is a serial killer who is killing mystery/thriller authors. Fiona Cameron, an authority on profiling, is involved in the search for the perp and her search is pretty personal since her live in boyfriend is just such an author. McDermid turns what could be a predictable plot into one really great story.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book. It is very intriguing, right to the end. I never guessed the perpetrator. A psychological crime thriller, it is one of the best.
    • 4/5
      This is a stand alone novel that takes a slightly different look at how a psychologist is able to help police solve crimes. Of course the psychologist is dragged into the crime, if not you don't have a story. It's an enjoyable read though the ending is a big of a let down.
    • 3/5
      A serial killer seems to be targetting crime writers and Finona Cameron, an academic psychologist who helps the police with geographic profiles of serial offenders, finds herself at the centre of these killings as her partner is a renowned crime writer who has received death threats. Several fairly well-disguised red herrings before the perpetrator is revealed.
    • 4/5
      [2010-12-21] Another doorstop of a crime novel from McDermid, this one about a statistics-based psychological profiler who will no longer work with the Met after they ignored her advice because it wasn't what they wanted to hear, and went with another profiler whose advice led to the collapse of the case.Fiona Cameron still works with other police departments. But one case comes only too close to home, with a serial killer who is stalking... crime writers who write about serial killers. And Fiona's boyfriend is on the list of novelists set to meet the same fate as their own characters. It has the potential to be a very silly conceit, but McDermid's far too skillful to let it slip into silliness. Instead it's used to ratchet up the tension in a very convincing way, in a dazzling display of meta commentary. Wonderful piece of work.
    • 3/5
      McDermid must be one of the top authors for a good, psychological , gripping thriller. Good plot, chilling - her books just get better and better.Back Cover Blurb:A killer is on the loose and he's blurring the line between fact and fiction. His prey - the writers of crime novels. But this murderer is like no other; his bloodlust shatters all the conventional wisdom on how serial killers operate. And for one woman the desperate hunt to uncover his identity becomes a matter of life and death.Professor Fiona Cameron is an academic psychologist who uses computer technology to track serial offenders. She vowed never to work for the Met again after they went against her advice and badly screwed up an investigation as a result. But when her lover, thriller writer Kit Martin, tells her a fellow novelist has been murdered, Fiona can't help taking an interest.With the killer striking again, Fiona is caught up in a race against time, not only to save a life, but to bring herself redemption, both personal and professional.
    • 3/5
      Sharp psychological thriller
    • 5/5
      I experienced this novel via an audiobook. I must tell you though, that I listened to the whole first disc at least twice through. I had a heck of a time at the start of this one because of the accent of the narrator. Word choices and pronunciations are a little hard to catch at first, but once I got going, it became easier. In fact, I actually began to like the her and her accent!Killing the Shadows is a story about a serial murderer that is targeting serial killer thriller writers. The main character of the book is Fiona Cameron. She is a psycological profiler and the girlfriend of Kit Martin, a writer of serial killer thrillers. It's pretty obvious to conclude that Kit will be targeted at some point of the story and it scares the pants off of Fiona who does everything that she can to save the love of her life. The story actually starts with a murder that is not part of any serial killing. So, there are a couple of story lines going at the same time. But, as the story begins to pull together toward the end of the book, it becomes clear why there were multiple investigations occuring at the same time. The author does a great job with description in this book. Although there were times that I wondered why there was so much detail about what seemed an insignificant part of the story. But bear with it, like I said it really pulls itself together. The book was hard to put down, and had enough going on that I never felt bored listening to it.
    • 4/5
      Thrilling from beginning to end, Killing the Shadows is an un-put-downable novel. The twist on the typical serial killer novel is masterful and I was surprised when the author revealed the killer's identity. McDermid reminds us that profilers and investigators are impacting on people's lives and should not rush to place blame simply because a case is high profile. Most of all, she reminds us that murder extends beyond the victim to their family and friends and those around them.
    • 3/5
      I was worried about this being a book about books with its killing setting taken from plots in fictional serial killer thrillers. But the human relations saved the book.