Confession: I read the Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series less for the mysteries and more for the characters and their chaotic personalities. The primary and recurring secondary characters are so realistic, being by turns sympathetic and irritating. It’s why I keep coming back and am never sorry to do so.

SPLINTER THE SILENCE, the latest installment in the series, doesn’t so much resolve a number of interpersonal subplots that have been hanging for a while as it does address them. Chief among them is the complicated relationship between psychologist Hill and former police detective Jordan. The first quarter or so of the book deals with getting rid of that “former” title as it applies to Jordan. As has been used in another context, the game’s afoot to bring Jordan back into the fold of the Bradfield Metropolitan Police, heading up a unit to handle difficult and complex murder cases.

"What a mix of personalities you’ll encounter in this fine series. You might come for the mystery, but you’ll stay for the characters."

Even as the groundwork is being laid to set up the unit and offer Jordan the job, she is charged with driving while intoxicated. Her problems with alcohol have been developing for several books. They provide the perfect vehicle for her to reach a low point, one that includes calling Hill, from whom she has been more or less estranged for some period of time, for a ride home from the rural station where she has been taken following her arrest. Hill uses this opportunity to perform a one-man intervention, and if his methods seem invasive or even a bit extreme, they work to the extent that such a thing is possible. An administrative deus ex machina makes the charges disappear (though some future blowback from this is hinted at throughout the book), and Jordan finds herself back in law enforcement with her team more or less intact, and with a case before it is even recognized as such.

That brings us to the muscle, if not the heart, of SPLINTER THE SILENCE. While Jordan’s dramas, triumphs and difficulties have been playing out, a serial killer has been operating in plain sight, targeting a specific group of women and setting the tableau of each death to make it appear as if each individual demise is the result of suicide. It is Hill who initially discerns the pattern, but it is a combination of the traditional and the technological (with the accent on the latter) that makes this a success for Jordan’s team, where (almost) everything old is (almost) new again. Meanwhile, the makeup of the new team sets some noses out of joint, more because of who is excluded than included, and it takes a couple of odd and unwelcome alliances to determine who did what and to what end. The result is a satisfying ride with a de facto epilogue tinged with irony and symmetry.

One gets the sense that McDermid has the next few Hill and Jordan books outlined (there are at least a couple of elements that have the potential to play out past the conclusion of SPLINTER THE SILENCE), but it will be difficult to top what has occurred up to this point. What a mix of personalities you’ll encounter in this fine series. You might come for the mystery, but you’ll stay for the characters.