Review by Booklist Review
DCI Karen Pirie, head of Police Scotland's Historic Cases Unit (HCU, formerly the Cold Case Squad), returns (after Still Life, 2020) with her team, known as "the lassies that wake the dead." It is April 2020, three weeks into COVID-19 lockdown, and Karen traverses a deserted Edinburgh after a librarian finds a recently deceased mystery author's unpublished book describing the murder of a young woman who went missing a year earlier. The HCU meticulously follows the manuscript's narrative and finds the woman's body. Everything points to the author himself having been the murderer, but Val McDermid's fans know better than to trust such a simple solution. She ingeniously flips over the rug and examines the pattern in reverse. Karen and her supporting cast are absorbing, providing insight into the restrictions on police work during the pandemic and plenty of Scottish flavor, especially shoogly (shaky) alibis and stooshie (wild) goings-on. Fans of the Karen Pirie television series, which debuted on British ITV in 2022 and has been commissioned for a second season, will be eager to read.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The riveting seventh installment in McDermid's Karen Pirie series (after 2020's Still Life) sees the Edinburgh DCI parsing a potentially deadly literary rivalry at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. As head of Scotland's Historic Cases Unit, Karen has spent the bulk of her time in lockdown researching details on a stack of unsolved crimes. An especially intriguing one lands on her desk courtesy of a researcher at the National Library, who's unearthed new evidence about the year-old disappearance of Lara Hardie, a novice crime writer who idolized bestseller Jake Stein. Stein, whose career hit the skids after he was accused of sexual assault at a book launch before the pandemic, has recently died of cancer, and a subsequent perusal of his belongings has turned up a manuscript that reads like a chilling roman à clef of Hardie's murder. In it, Stein appears to admit to strangling Hardie and planning to frame his personal and professional rival, Ross McEwan. More digging reveals that McEwan has been carrying on an affair with Stein's wife, Rosalind, so Karen and her team set out to determine the level of Stein's and McEwan's involvement in Hardie's disappearance. McDermid keeps the twists coming hard and fast, and she bolsters them with sharp observations about the toll of Covid on the public psyche. This page-turner grips from the outset and doesn't let go. Agent: Lizzy Kremer, David Higham Assoc. (Nov.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Is there any greater pleasure than reading a writer at the top of her game? Following Still Life, McDermid returns with a new case for DCI Karen Pirie of Edinburgh's Historic Cases Unit (HCU). It's April 2020 and Karen and her team, together with the rest of the city, are in COVID lockdown and working from home when Jason "the Mint" Murray receives a call from Meera Reddy, his favorite archivist at the National Library of Scotland. Before the pandemic, she was processing the papers of the recently deceased crime writer Jake Stein and had been dismayed by one of his stories outlining a perfect murder. Stein's fictionalized victim suffers from a rare form of epilepsy and bears a striking resemblance to a real young woman who disappeared in Edinburgh over a year ago. The HCU team reads the story and realizes that Meera may have stumbled upon something significant. They are soon working on the disappearance, despite juggling strict lockdown rules and the obstructionist intervention of their boss, ACC Markie. VERDICT With an intricate plot, authentic dialogue, rich details, and masterly McDermid twists and turns, this book will delight Pirie fans, existing and new.--Penelope J.M. Klein
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Edinburgh DCI Karen Pirie of the Historic Cases Unit takes on a fiendishly difficult assignment made even harder by the exigencies of the Covid-19 lockdown. Now that Hamish Mackenzie, her coffee chain--owning boyfriend, is off in the Highlands, Karen's settled into his home together with DS Daisy Mortimer, her lockdown flatmate. She's allowed one hour of outdoor exercise a day, and she's been warned to keep her distance from members of the public. So it's lucky for her that mystery novelist Jake Stein, the leading suspect in the disappearance of Lara Hardie, an EU student who vanished a year ago, has died himself in the meantime. The weightiest piece of evidence against Jake, whose career had taken a sudden downturn after an ex-lover's public accusations of sexual abuse had sent both his wife and publisher heading for the exits, is truly chilling: The Vanishing of Laurel Oliver, an unfinished manuscript he left behind that laid out in meticulous detail how fictional crime writer Jamie Cobain, an obvious stand-in for his author, lured the title character into an isolated location and strangled her so that he could frame his chess partner and professional rival Rob Thomas, a thinly disguised version of Ross McEwen, the rising mystery novelist and chess partner who'd taken up with Jake's ex-wife, for the murder. The tricky setup sounds like Anthony Horowitz, but the subplot, which concerns Karen's troubled efforts to shelter a Syrian refugee on the run from the assassins whose attack back home led to the deaths of his wife and son, is pure McDermid. Ingenious, humane, and all too telling as a reminder of the costs of the pandemic even on its survivors. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
