A Darker Domain by Val McDermid was first published in 2008, the setting is mainly Fife in the east of Scotland, and the time switches between 1985 and 2007. This is the second in the author’s Karen Pirie series.
DI Karen Pirie is in charge of cold cases. An adult daughter is desperate to discover the whereabouts of her estranged father who hasn’t been seen since the miner’s strike in 1985. It’s thought that he had been a ‘scab’ who had gone down to Nottingham to get work there. That turned his abandoned wife and young daughter into pariahs as far as the mining community was concerned. It’s now 2007 and the action swings between 1985 and 2007 although it isn’t at all confusing.
Karen Pirie finds herself investigating two cold cases as in 1985 there had been a kidnapping in Fife. The daughter of a very wealthy and well-known businessman had been abducted along with her small son and in the chaos of a handover she had been shot dead, and her young son had never been handed over to his wealthy grandfather with the kidnappers disappearing with him. When an investigative journalist discovers a possible clue in an abandoned building in Tuscany – of all places – Karen has to open that case again too.
I enjoyed this one, I must say that a lot of people have in the past complained that Val McDermid’s books are too grim and violent, but this one isn’t like that. There’s violence but nothing really graphic.
This is the most local to me book that I’ve ever read, one of the detectives even bought a house that must have been about five minutes away from where I lived for 26 years, going from the description. It definitely adds to the experience when you can visualise all the wee villages mentioned in Fife.
The miners strike took me right back to 1985. Jack had trouble getting to work as the police were stopping any cars which only had men in them and as teachers had all been encouraged to car share as parking at schools was a problem, they didn’t have enough spaces. So the car they were travelling in was stopped by the police and turned back as they were suspected of being ‘flying pickets’ travelling to coal pits to help out the striking miners. So the police were menacing and threatening cars full of teachers – and getting huge pay packets for their troubles. Grim times all round.
This is an excellent review. I liked this book partially because of learning more about miner’s strike. I agree, reading about a town you are familiar with adds to the experience, especially if it is a good depiction of the setting.
I plan to read the third book in this series sometime in 2025.
tracybham,
I plan to continue with this series so will be getting down to book three sometime soonish too. It’ll be interesting to see what we both think of it.
I haven’t read this series but had to laugh at the title being “darker” because her books are usually so dark already! There was one horrific book where the heroine was graphically raped and I am not sure I have read any since. However, I did go hear her speak a few years ago when she was near Boston and I found her very charming and interesting. I gave book 1 in this series to my sister for Christmas because it didn’t seem too gruesome and I am glad to know I was right! Setting is definitely a bonus!
Constance,
I can definitely do without anything gruesome so I think I’ll have to be careful, maybe I should just stick to the Karen Pirie books. I didn’t watch that Wire in the Blood series on TV as I heard it was gruesome. There were complaints at the time about modern crime fiction being too nasty and graphic, but Ian Rankin (another local) pointed out that it seemed to be the female authors who were writing horrific things. I’ve certainly not had any trouble reading his books.