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For more than three decades Scottish author Val McDermid has been delighting fans with her sometimes edgy, always original, and often ground-breaking crime novels. With more than five series, totalling thirty-one novels, several short story collections, and two non-fiction works to her credit, she has won numerous awards, including the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger and Cartier Diamond Dagger for outstanding lifetime achievement. In 2016 she published OUT OF BOUNDS, which I listed among the top half-dozen crime novels I'd read in the past decade.
BROKEN GROUND is the sixth (and latest) novel in McDermid's Karen Pirie series, and this one finds DCI Pirie looking into a cold case dating from the mid-eighties, when a number of rapes took place. She's having problems tracking down the owner of a car sighted in the area at the time when she stumbles on another case: a body has been found in a grave in rural Scotland. It seems to date from World War II, except for one thing: the victim is wearing footwear manufactured only much later. And never one to shy away from a heavy caseload, Pirie is intrigued by what appears to be a clear-cut case of domestic self-defence. But is it? All this while she does battle with a formidable opponent: Assistant Chief Constable Ann Markie (known to her staff as Dog Biscuit) is convinced Pirie isn't up to the job, and has planted a thorn among her rosy staff to keep tabs on Pirie. Just one more thing for her to deal with.
One of the many appealing aspects of Val McDermid's novels is that you never get bored. Her stories are layered, and the solutions are never obvious. The atmosphere is omnipresent, the characters are fresh and three-dimensional, the dialogue rivetting, and the narration bears witness to McDermid's unique and engaging voice:
There were places in Scotland where satnav was as much use as a chocolate compass. Wester Fearn House was one of them. It was nominally part of a hamlet called Teavarran, which the officious woman who lived in the car's computer believed she'd brought them to. But it wasn't really a place, just a road through a wood that opened out on to high moorland…
The whole of BROKEN GROUND makes for compelling reading. Val McDermid has another clear winner.
§ Since 2005 Jim Napier's reviews and interviews have appeared in several Canadian newspapers and on various crime fiction and literary websites, including his own award-winning review site, Deadly Diversions. His debut crime novel LEGACY was published in 2017, and the second in the series, RIDLEY'S WAR, is scheduled for release in the Fall of 2019.
Reviewed by Jim Napier, June 2019
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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