{"id":7527,"date":"2018-10-22T08:30:07","date_gmt":"2018-10-22T12:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7527"},"modified":"2018-10-22T13:23:21","modified_gmt":"2018-10-22T17:23:21","slug":"broken-ground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7527","title":{"rendered":"*****Broken Ground"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Scottish

usameredith, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

By Val McDermid\u2014There\u2019s a reason readers around the world look forward to a new book by the \u201cqueen of crime,\u201d and her legions of fans will not be disappointed with this one! Val McDermid\u2019s new police procedural is her fifth crime thriller featuring Edinburgh police cold case detective Karen Pirie, who\u2019s not above putting her faith in the value of her work above the priorities of her superiors.<\/p>\n

Pirie and her trusty ally, Detective Constable Jason Murray, and her untrustworthy new detective sergeant, \u201cthat utter shitehawk Gerry McCartney\u201d\u2014sent by the new Assistant Chief Constable Ann Markie to spy on Pirie, she\u2019s sure\u2014try to unravel three different cold cases.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re tackling the first, a series of brutal 30-year-old rapes, with recently obtained information about a vehicle that may have been involved. In the second, they\u2019re flouting the rules to stay involved in a current-day situation: Pirie has overheard two women in a coffee shop planning to confront a hostile estranged husband. It\u2019s a poor strategy with a strong potential for violence, and Pirie tells them so\u2014advice not received as kindly as it was intended. It\u2019s a testament to McDermid\u2019s narrative skills that the pursuit of these two cases, subplots, really, are every bit as engaging as the team\u2019s biggest and much more tangled investigation.<\/p>\n

In an opening scene set in Wester Ross, Scotland, in 1944, two friends bury a pair of large crates in a peat bog. Seventy years later, the granddaughter of one of them returns to the Highlands to claim her inheritance. Using her grandfather\u2019s map to the hiding place, she and her husband approach the local crofter, Hamish Mackenzie, a handsome fellow who might have swaggered out of the pages of Outlander<\/em>. He agrees to help them dig.<\/p>\n

The excavation proceeds smoothly. One crate up: in it, a pristine (I won\u2019t say what; I\u2019ll let you discover this treasure for yourself). They unearth the second crate, but it seems to have been disturbed, perhaps by the dead man lying on top of it. The body is remarkably well preserved, due to the peculiar characteristics of peat bogs. However it came there, it wasn\u2019t recently, which means the investigation is in the remit of Pirie\u2019s Historic Cases Unit.<\/p>\n

McDermid is much-praised for her brilliant evocation of the places, mores, and culture of Scotland, as well as the procedures and rivalries within Police Scotland. As a result, the atmosphere she creates is believable down to the last wisp of mist. Introducing Hamish Mackenzie as a potential love interest for Pirie adds a bit of Celtic spice.<\/p>\n

Although the cases Pirie works on are old, the investigation methods brought into play are fascinatingly up-to-the-minute. DNA analysis, deployed in the rape case, is only one of them. Rapid reconstruction of the bog corpse\u2019s appearance is another. Analysis and enhancement of cell phone contents is yet a third. McDermid, who has a great interest in forensics, likes to get these technologies right, and she gives Pirie a pair of worthy confederates: her friends River Wilde, a forensic anthropologist, and Tamsin, head of a laboratory in Police Scotland\u2019s Gartcosh Crime Centre. They, like she, believe families should not have to wait one day longer than necessary to learn the fate of their loved one.<\/p>\n

Though Pirie occasionally missteps, mostly by treading on the toes of other police officials, and especially ACC Markie, McDermid never puts a foot wrong. Her prose is so clear and engaging, this is a book that will keep you turning pages. Like Pirie, you will be hungry for just that one more bit of evidence.<\/p>\n

****The Skeleton Road<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Having read the six books I took to Sicily, I raided my last hotel\u2019s shelf of abandoned books and picked up this 2014 thriller by McDermid, which entangles Pirie and Murray in a case of long-ago war crimes, revenge, and distorted justice. The eight-hour airplane ride flew by!
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By Val McDermid\u2014There\u2019s a reason readers around the world look forward to a new book by the \u201cqueen of crime,\u201d and her legions of fans will not be disappointed with this one! Val McDermid\u2019s new police procedural is her fifth … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"*****Broken Ground - Val McDermid does it again in her latest cold case thriller!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[52,54,40,3,632,126],"tags":[1423,1424,817,415,344],"class_list":["post-7527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-detective","category-fiction","category-mystery","category-police","category-reading-2","tag-broken-ground","tag-skeleton-road","tag-tartan-noir","tag-thriller","tag-val-mcdermid"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1Xp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7527"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7531,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7527\/revisions\/7531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}