To The Last Page

There have been disappointing signs of a softening in Val McDermid's crime fiction in recent years, and one or two downright badly plotted books.  here's a sense then that the author is attempting to get back to basics in Out of Bounds by revisiting and expanding on her series about Edinburgh police officer, DCI Karen Pirie. As a detective for the Scottish Police Historical Crimes Unit, there's an opportunity here to build up a wider view of relevant Scottish issues, establishing connections between the past and the present, and - as seen in the Balkans investigation in McDermid's most recent DCI Pirie novel The Skeleton Road - extend that view out to Scotland's place in Europe and the wider world. With a strong focus on procedural and personality, it should be a winning combination, but for a variety of reasons McDermid doesn't make it work. If only the author could apply the same kind of rigour to character that she applies to contemporary issues in her nove...

Cold case investigator for the Fife Police DI Force Karen Pirie is called upon to deal with a case that goes back to the troubled period of the 1984 Miner's Strike, when it is discovered that a man believed to gone with five other workers who left the Newton of Wemyss twenty years ago wasn't a scab like the rest of them looking for work in England, but rather Mick Prentice has simply disappeared. At the same time a journalist makes an incredible discovery while on holiday in Italy that reopens another twenty year old case - the kidnapping and murder of the daughter of one of Scotland's richest and most prominent businessmen by a group of anarchists and the disappearance of her son. McDermid's work is among the very best in crime writing, drawing the reader immediately into the complexities of two linked cases through strong, realistic characterisation, tying the circumstances into real-world events, both historical (the '84 Miners' Strike) and current (the Madel...

I haven’t read a Val McDermid book before but was most impressed by Fever of the Bone, the 6th Tony Hill and Carol Jordan. While there is clearly a strong cast of character here that have been built up through a series of other adventures, but this doesn’t prevent the reader from soon picking up the personalities and the relationships lying between them. At first sight, there’s nothing unusual about the cold cases being investigated by DCI Carol Jordan and her elite investigation unit - only difficulties and impediments put in her way be a new Chief Constable who wants to shake things up a bit in the Bradfield police force. Soon however their talents are called upon in the case of a serial killer case who after much preparation and grooming of young teenagers on an Internet Social Networking site, has just started to draw his victims in and execute them, his motives a complete mystery. With profiler Tony Hill out-of-bounds under the new regime and having some personal issues of his own...