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St Andrews December 1978 Four friends going home from a Christmas party find a young woman dying and go for help but too late. Then the police’s interest in them seems to be only as suspects. Nothing is proved (or disproved). In 2003 it seems like all four of the self-styled “Laddies fi’ Kirkcaldy” have made a success of their lives in their various chosen careers, two in the US, two still in Scotland. Then the investigation is reopened and soon after two of the men are murdered. Is this the distant echo of the past? Alex Gilby isn’t sure who killed Rosie Duff back in St Andrews or his friends Ziggy and Mondo, but knows that until he, or the police, find out what happened, he won’t be safe, and nor will his family. I looked forward to this book with its title taken from a song lyric by 70s UK band the Jam, the combination of past and present etc. I was a little disappointed though – I did not find it to be one of Val McDermid’s best novels. There were a lot of characters to keep straight, and few were fully enough drawn to remember who they were without looking them up constantly. Even the most central characters felt a little shadowy to me. Another thing, use of detail, pulled me out of the story. McDermid would have been a journalist in 1978, and she puts comments about news stories from the 1970s in her characters’ mouths. The problem is, they don’t quite ring true tossed into the conversation, and I think they would have been better omitted (they subtract rather than add to the story or the scene setting). An interesting read but I miss the focus, craft, characterisation and humour of this author’s best work.
Reviewed by Luci Davin, July 2003
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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