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.