Tag Archives: Val McDermid

Out of Bounds by Val McDermid

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Out of Bounds Book CoverOut of Bounds by Val McDermid was first published in 2016 and it’s the fourth book in the Karen Pirie series. I can’t say too much about the book as I know that some blogpals have begun to read the series and I don’t want to spoil anything for them.

Briefly, Karen Pirie is of course head of the Cold Cases at Police Scotland. When a young joy rider crashes a car and ends up in a coma his DNA is routinely taken and tested, with the result that a close family connection of his had commited a murder 22 years earlier, but had never been tracked down.

In theory it should be an easy job to find the murderer – but of course nothing is as simple as Karen hopes.

The setting is mainly Edinburgh,  but it does move to London for a short time. I’ll continue with this series although I enjoyed the first two books of the series most, that might be because the settings were so close to what is now home for me, that’s very parochial of me I know but it’s always a plus if you can literally see the streets that you’re reading about.

The Skeleton Road by Val McDermid

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The Skeleton Road Book CoverThe Skeleton Road by Val McDermid was first published in 2014 and it’s the third book in her Karen Pirie series.

Fraser Jardine is a demolition quantity surveyor, he’s been doing it for some years now but had always managed to avoid going onto the roof of any building that he was inspecting, which is just as well as he has a terrible fear of heights. But the day comes when he’s the only person available and he has to go on to the roof of a large and very tall and crumbling Victorian Gothic building, the John Drummond in Edinburgh. Fraser is a complete wreck, but when he reaches one of the roof’s decorative pinnacles, he’s in for an even worse time. There’s a skeleton lying inside the pinnacle, and the skull has a hole in the side of the head.

This is obviously a job for Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie, head of Cold Cases. As all the clothes have been rotted away by the weather and time there’s really nothing to go on, it seems unlikely that the murder victim will ever be identified.  But there is a tiny bit of possible evidence to be researched, and the trail leads to the time of the Balkan Wars some decades previously.

So this one was quite different from the first two books in this series, with the investigation moving to Croatia where Karen is told about some of the atrocities in that horrendous war.

The blurb says: Atmospheric, spine-chilling and brimming with intrigue and suspense , this is Val McDermid’s richest and most accomplished psychological thriller to date.

I actually found it to be a bit too dark and sad for me, but I suppose that given the fact that the very first shot of the Balkan War was fired in Kirkcaldy where McDermid grew up, then it’s fair enough that she wanted to incorporate it in one of her books.

My Scotland by Val McDermid

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My Scotland by Val McDermid was first published in 2019, it has beautiful photographs by Alan McCredie and a foreword by Nicola Sturgeon, and is published by Sphere.

This is a beautifully produced book, with sumptuous photographs which are linked to some of her book locations. To begin with the focus is on Fife, where Val was born and grew up, there are plenty of places to ignite the imagination of a novelist, and it seems she has been salting away ideas since she was a youngster. This first chapter was all very familiar to me as I lived in Kirkcaldy for 26 years, and in the area where she lived, but it was nice to read of her links with the various places.

The East Neuk coastal communities feature, she mentions that most people probably never get through the doors of  the old fishermen’s cottages but by coincidence, I also have relatives who lived in George Street, Cellardyke – as her aunt and uncle did. The atmospheric St Andrews nearby couldn’t be missed out.

There’s a chapter about Glasgow, a place she fell in love with as a young journalist, and then fell in love with again after she had moved away, and returned to find it much changed. It’s a city that’s close to my heart – as I was born there.

Obviously Edinburgh features, often there are excerpts from her books, linked to whichever area the chapter is about, and she mentions that even when a book had a mainly English setting she would feel the need to send her characters to a favourite area, somewhere in the Highlands where she had holidayed. At Loch Leven, by Kinross, Val is photographed on a bench where in a book she had placed a murder victim, overlooking the island where Mary, Queen of Scots had been held prisoner and eventually escaped from.

Linlithgow also gets a mention, for the ugliness of the 1970s/80s buildings that have been stuck right next to beautiful 18th century buildings. It’s one of my favourite towns, it’s so historic, but there’s no doubt you have to avert your eyes from the concrete brutality that was given planning permission in the centre of the town.

Obviously the Isle of Skye features too, a favourite place for lots of people, more than the places though this book is a really entertaining read and Val McDermid comes across as having a really warm and friendly personality. It was good to be in her company while I read it.

I borrowed this one from the library.

 

Library books

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I thought I’d mention the books that I’ve borrowed from the library – so here goes.

 

I had a look at the online catalogue to request the next book in Val McDermid’s Karen Pirie series, but my attention was caught by her book titled My Scotland so I picked it up recently and have just started to read it, I think I’ll really enjoy it and it has lovely phoptographs by Alan McCredie.

The Inn at the Edge of the World Book Cover

 

I also borrowed The Inn at the Edge of the World by Alice Thomas Ellis. I know it was a blogger who recommended this one, but have no idea who. The setting is a remote Hebridean island.

 

 

 

Next is Hex by Jenni Fagan. It’s a retelling of the North Berwick witch trials.

 

 

Raven Black by Ann Cleeves. I don’t think I’ve read anything by her but I have watched some of the Shetland series on TV.

 

 

 

Lastly I requested The King’s Messenger by Susanna Kearsley which is historical fiction. The setting is Scotland and England in 1613

 

So it seems that all the books I have from the library at the moment have Scottish settings.  January has been a very Scottish month, I must broaden my horizons!

Feel free to tell me what you have borrowed from your local library recently.

Queen Macbeth by Val McDermid

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Queen Macbeth by Val McDermid was published in 2024 and I borrowed a copy of it from the library. In this book McDermid puts forward her version of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, but written from Gruoch’s (Lady Macbeth’s) perspective.

Shakespeare fed us the myth of the Macbeths as murderous conspirators. But now Val McDermid drags the truth out of the shadows, exposing the patriarchal prejudices of history.

Gruoch is married to Gille Coemgain a chief in what is now the Inverness area of Scotland, he’s the Earl of Moray and is a bit of a brute. Gruoch is in danger because she hasn’t become pregnant and Gille is getting impatient,  obviously Gille Coemgain wants a son. Her days are numbered, and she knows it.

When the very handsome Macbeth arrives to visit his cousin Gille, Gruoch is instantly attracted to him, but apart from that he could be the answer to her problem. In this version the ‘three witches’ are Gruoch’s companions, a seer, a healer and a weaver.

This is a very slim volume at just 134 pages, very different from Val McDermid’s usual style and subject, but still a good read, I really enjoyed it.

This book is part of a series called Darkland Tales published by Polygon. Others in the series are:

Rizzio by Denise Mina

Hex by Jenni Fagan

Nothing Left to Fear from Hell by Alan Warner

Columba’s Bones by David Greig

 

 

 

 

A Darker Domain by Val McDermid

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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.

Marriage by Susan Ferrier

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Marriage cover

Marriage by Susan Ferrier was completely unknown to me until I saw it displayed in Kirkcaldy’s main library recently. I had never even heard of the author but she was a well known and successful author in her day – and a friend of Sir Walter Scott. Marriage was first published in 1818 but Virago reprinted it recently. She was writing at the same time as Jane Austen of course but her writing is completely different and so much more modern in feeling. In the blurb Susan Ferrier is described as having been one of Scotland’s greatest writers – I certainly enjoyed this one.

When the novel begins Lady Juliana is just seventeen – and a half as she says. Her father Lord Courtland has decided it’s time to speak to her of marriage, he obviously wants to see her settled with a wealthy husband. Juliana is of a more romantic temperament and she believes that she should be united to the choice of her heart.

‘The choice of a fiddlestick exclaimed Lord Courtland in a rage. What have you to do with a heart? what has anyone to do with a heart when their establishment in life is at stake? Keep your heart for your romances, child, and don’t bring such nonsense into real life – heart indeed!’

The upshot is of course that Juliana rejects the elderly and unattractive gentleman chosen by her father and she elopes to Scotland with a handsome young man that she has only just met. He’s a penniless soldier but he comes of a ‘good’ family who own an estate in Scotland. It’s all a huge eye-opener for Juliana as life in a remote part of Scotland amongst her husband’s very eccentric relatives is not what she expected it to be. There’s no money despite the estate and it isn’t long before Juliana is the mother of twins! Both girls.

Juliana can’t even bring herself to look at the smallest child as she’s not pretty like her sister and she gladly gives Mary to her husband’s childless aunt to bring up. Juliana regrets hugely her elopement and leaves her husband, taking Adelaide with her to London.

After sixteen years Mary gets the opportunity to go to London and meet her mother and sister for the first time. Of course the sisters are like chalk and cheese with Mary being strictly brought up to put others first and Adelaide turning out to be a spoiled brat – just like her mother.

There’s a lot of humour in this book and a lot of Scotland too, some great characters and a lot of observation on human nature and character. Like many writers around that time Ferrier delighted in giving some of her characters apt names including one Doctor Dolittle, a name which was taken up over 100 years later by the author Hugh Lofting. She was paid much more than Jane Austen was for her books, it must have helped to have Sir Walter Scott as a friend. Unfortunately she only wrote three books as she ‘got religion’ and gave up writing to concentrate on that although to be fair she campaigned for the abolition of slavery and probably thought that was more important than writing entertaining books.

If you are interested in giving this book a go you can download it from Project Gutenberg here.

The Virago book has an introduction by Val McDermid.

Click here to read what The National Library of Scotland says of Susan Ferrier’s novels:

The Distant Echo by Val McDermid

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The Distant Echo cover

Strictly speaking I read most of this book in 2017, but it’s the first one I’ve finished in 2018.

The Distant Echo by Val McDermid is the first in her Karen Pirie series, but she doesn’t turn up in this book until nearer the end of it when she’s been given the task of investigating a cold case going back 25 years or so to 1978.

The action begins in St Andrews, Fife, around the Christmas holidays where four male students are out celebrating at a local pub. It’s freezing and snowy and on the way home they stumble across a woman who is breathing her last in the snow. She has been stabbed and there’s blood everywhere.

The local police seem determined to pin the murder on the students who are almost locals and are known as ‘the lads fi’ Kirkcaldy’, another town in Fife about 20 miles from St Andrews. The ‘gentlemen’ of the press are quick to be judge and jury, so suddenly the four witnesses are suspects and everyone is turning against them.

The action moves on to 25 years later when the ‘lads’ have settled in their various occupations, but the past catches up with them unexpectedly and the nightmare begins again.

This is the first book by McDermid that I’ve read, apart from her Jane Austen re-write of Northanger Abbey. I was quite surprised by it, mainly because I had it in my mind that her writing would be a bit more cerebral – silly of me really as probably if it was then her books wouldn’t sell as well as they do.

I found this book to be just an okay read, I’ll probably give it three stars on Goodreads, but I suspect that most of my interest in it depended on me living close to all the locations and knowing the areas involved so well. McDermid even mentions a woman that I knew when I lived in Kirkaldy and she has her characters walking around so many of the local roads where I lived until recently.

I really had to suspend my disbelief towards the end of the book and I don’t think it’s fair when an author withholds information from the reader in the way that McDermid did – but maybe that’s just me being picky.

I’ll probably give the next one in the series a go to see if the Karen Pirie character grows on me, but so far McDermid has been a bit of a disappointment.

Murder Under the Christmas Tree – short stories

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Murder Under the Christmas Tree cover

Murder Under the Christmas Tree is a compilation of short stories by well known authors, all set around about Christmas – as you would expect.

The first story is The Necklace of Pearls by Dorothy L. Sayers. I’m quite a fan of Sayers but I have to admit that I was a wee bit disappointed with this one as I guessed the solution fairly quickly.

The other contributers are Ian Rankin, Margery Allingham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Val McDermid, Ellis Peters, Edmund Crispin, G.K. Chesterton, Carter Dickson and Ngaio Marsh. The sleuths include Holmes, Lord Peter Wimsey, Cadfael, Father Brown, Rebus and others you will recognise.

It’s quite a collection of authors and I’m sure there’s something for everyone here, well everyone who enjoys a good murder around the festive season – as I do!

I read this book for the Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge.

Bookish Links to the Guardian

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There are quite a few interesting bookish articles in this Saturday’s Guardian.

You might be interested in reading le Carre on le Carre from the Weekend section. I think we have all of his books but I have yet to read any of them.

If you’re a fan of Val McDermid you can read an article by her here.

There’s an article on Ann Patchett here.

There’s an article about a biography of Beryl Bainbridge here.

There’s an article on a book about Monet’s waterlily paintings, read it here if you’re interested.

I have a feeling that most bookish people are inclined to be shy, as I am, so if that describes you too you might like to read this article – Shrinking Violets: A Field Guide to Shyness by Joe Moran.