I warmly welcomed the return of the cold case team in the seventh Karen Pirie thriller. Karen, Daisy, and Jason begin to work on an unsolved disappearance after a manuscript with chilling similarity to the case turns up in a dead author’s possessions. Val McDermid turns her hand to the tricky book within a book, in fact a manuscript and notes within a book, and does so beautifully. I imagine it was hugely entertaining for her to write about her own craft and the crime writing community, and I smiled and smirked as certain aspects and authors turned up. Crime fiction fans (in particular those who enjoy the festivals) will delight in recognising certain aspects and perhaps behaviours.
It must have been incredibly difficult to return to the beginning of covid, which ensured the tone was serious and on occasion grim. The writing around covid is full of empathy, care and consideration. Covid means a more contained novel in terms of characters, which in turn means a more in-depth behind the scenes look at the team. The plot itself doesn’t feel contained though, in fact multiple layers build and shift and while I was allowed to step ahead in some areas, I found myself bustling to keep up in others. For the way in which covid is written about, as well as the crime-writing community, I just had to hand out a LoveReading Star Book award. Past Lying is smart as heck, and throughly entertaining while remaining observant of the horrors of Covid-19 and the first lockdown.
Edinburgh, haunted by the ghosts of its many writers, is also the cold case beat of DCI Karen Pirie. So she shouldn't be surprised when an author's manuscript appears to be a blueprint for an actual crime.
Karen can't ignore the plot's chilling similarities to the unsolved case of an Edinburgh University student who vanished from her own doorstep. The manuscript seems to be the key to unlocking what happened to Lara Hardie, but there's a problem: the author died before he finished it.
As Karen digs deeper, she uncovers a spiralling game of betrayal and revenge, where lies are indistinguishable from the truth and with more than one unexpected twist . . .
The Queen of Crime Val McDermid is at the top of her game in her most gripping and fiendishly clever case yet.
McDermid is at her considerable best here - Guardian
A supremo of the genre at the height of her powers . . . An unmissable new series -- Peter James A tour-de-force . . . The Queen of Crime has delivered another masterpiece -- David Baldacci -
Author
About Val McDermid
Val McDermid is a number one bestselling author whose novels have been translated into more than forty languages and have sold over nineteen million copies. She has won many awards, including the CWA Gold Dagger, the LA Times Book of the Year Award and the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for outstanding achievement. Val writes full-time and divides her time between Edinburgh and East Neuk of Fife.
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